CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A serial rapist is striking at will in Clayton County - most recently this past weekend - and police are doing everything they can to warn people who may be at risk.
Tuesday afternoon, Clayton County police officers and sheriff's deputies handed out flyers in the neighborhoods and apartment complexes in the areas where they say the man has attacked women - throughout Jonesboro, Morrow and Riverdale.
The flyers show two sketches of the man that are based on witness descriptions, as well as safety tips to help people protect themselves. Even though the two sketches are not identical, police say that the DNA in seven assault cases between 2015 and this past weekend is identical - the same man's DNA.
“The DNA evidence does not give us a specific name, but the DNA evidence all links to the same person,” said Clayton County Police SVU Capt. Scott Stubbs in June, 2018, when police released the sketches.
Police said the same man has committed at least seven assaults - the most recent on March 2, where police said the man forced his way into one of the apartment complexes along Southlake Parkway and held the victim at knife point while he raped her.
One woman told 11Alive Tuesday there is no doubt in her mind that one of the sketches in particular resembles the man who attacked her in her own home - in front of her children - in 2017.
“Looks just like the guy,” she said.
The man "followed her inside of her house and attacked her," according to a 2017 Clayton County police report. The report says the man grabbed her from behind while she was in the bathroom helping one of her children wash his face.
The report says he then pushed her into the bathtub, yelling at her, "let's not do this the hard way." She and another one of her children were able to fight him off, she said, before he could rape her, and he ran away shouting, "You better not call the cops."
In her case, she said police told her that the man did not leave any DNA behind. But she is sure, she said, the man pictured in one of the sketches of the serial rapist was her attacker.
“That really looks like the guy who attacked me,” she said of the sketch. “And he may have attacked lots of other women that there is no DNA left behind … I don’t know how many other cases they have like this.”
Stubbs said in June that the suspect’s DNA is not in the national database, so, while they can link him to seven of the assaults, they haven’t been able to identify him yet.
“It should be alarming,” Stubbs said then. “This person needs to be located as soon as possible so that we can take him off the streets.”
Police are responding with increased patrols in the areas of the attacks, including the areas around Hwy 138, Southlake Parkway and Battle Creek corridors.
In all of the cases, the suspect went after African-American women who lived in either apartment complexes or townhomes, or, in one of the cases, in a single-family home.
If anyone has any information on the attacks, or the suspect, or if they want to report suspicious activity, they're asked to call 911.
