African ‘Refugee’ Living In Seattle Is A Serial Rapist
January 31, 2019
SEATTLE, WA (The Seattle Times) – A convicted rapist serving a prison sentence was booked into the King County Jail on Friday to face another rape charge filed earlier this month after his DNA was matched to a second victim through a previously untested rape kit, jail and court records show.
Kirose Hailu, now 27, is serving a 14-year prison term for raping an intoxicated woman in an alley on Seattle’s Capitol Hill in February 2014. He was charged earlier this month with second-degree rape, accused of raping a second woman in downtown Seattle eight months after the first rape, charging papers say.
Since 2015, police agencies across the state have been required to submit evidence from every sexual-assault exam to the State Patrol Crime Lab for forensic analysis after a law was passed taking discretion away from individual officers and detectives to decide which kits to send in for testing. At the same time, the state began a concerted effort to catalog and test some 6,000 previously-untested kits that had sat untouched in evidence rooms for years, with the hope of linking cases and identifying serial offenders.
Among the tests sent in was the one belonging to a now-34-year-old woman, who was struggling with a heroin addiction when she was raped by a stranger on Oct. 22, 2014, say the charges against Hailu.
Following the rape, she went to the hospital and underwent a sexual-assault exam, where evidence taken from her body was packaged into what is commonly referred to as a rape kit, according to charging papers.
*What The Seattle Times report does not tell the reader is that Kirose Hailu is an Ethiopian, who was allowed to enter this country through one of the many ‘refugee resettlement’ programs currently being offered and funded by the U.S. government.
The kits can contain a variety of evidence, including underwear and swabs of a victim’s mouth, fingernails, genitals and any part of the skin where semen or saliva may be present. Blood and urine are also collected and bruises and other injuries are photographed.
A detective entered the woman’s rape kit into evidence and tried to contact her for a follow-up interview, but never heard back from her. Her case was closed in November 2014.
Though Seattle police submitted the woman’s rape kit in March 2015 for forensic testing, it doesn’t appear that it was analyzed at that time; court documents don’t indicate why. Police again requested that her kit be tested in June 2016 — but the results didn’t come back until April, nearly two years later. The DNA was matched to Hailu, the charges say.
In August, the case was assigned to another detective. By then, a victim advocate had located the woman, who agreed to come in for an interview.
According to the charges, at the time of the rape the woman was struggling with heroin addiction and after six months being sober, she went downtown looking to score drugs from her usual dealer. A man approached her, claimed he’d seen the dealer walk down a nearby alley, and offered to walk with her, the charges say.
Once in the alley, the man pushed her down, threatened to kill her and raped her, the charges say. Then he left.
Following the rape, the woman described hitting rock bottom and eventually overdosing.
She entered a one-year treatment program in February 2015.
By then, Hailu and a second man, Wolid Mohammed, had been identified as suspects in the February 2014 rape on Capitol Hill. They were charged with second-degree rape after their DNA was matched to DNA recovered from the then-21-year-old victim’s rape kit, court records show.
The woman had been out drinking with friends at R Place, but got separated from them when the bar closed. She encountered Hailu and Mohammed, who were both strangers to her, in an alley where they raped her, according to the charges.
Hailu and Mohammed pleaded guilty to the rape and other charges in August 2015.
January 31, 2019
SEATTLE, WA (The Seattle Times) – A convicted rapist serving a prison sentence was booked into the King County Jail on Friday to face another rape charge filed earlier this month after his DNA was matched to a second victim through a previously untested rape kit, jail and court records show.
Kirose Hailu, now 27, is serving a 14-year prison term for raping an intoxicated woman in an alley on Seattle’s Capitol Hill in February 2014. He was charged earlier this month with second-degree rape, accused of raping a second woman in downtown Seattle eight months after the first rape, charging papers say.
Since 2015, police agencies across the state have been required to submit evidence from every sexual-assault exam to the State Patrol Crime Lab for forensic analysis after a law was passed taking discretion away from individual officers and detectives to decide which kits to send in for testing. At the same time, the state began a concerted effort to catalog and test some 6,000 previously-untested kits that had sat untouched in evidence rooms for years, with the hope of linking cases and identifying serial offenders.
Among the tests sent in was the one belonging to a now-34-year-old woman, who was struggling with a heroin addiction when she was raped by a stranger on Oct. 22, 2014, say the charges against Hailu.
Following the rape, she went to the hospital and underwent a sexual-assault exam, where evidence taken from her body was packaged into what is commonly referred to as a rape kit, according to charging papers.
*What The Seattle Times report does not tell the reader is that Kirose Hailu is an Ethiopian, who was allowed to enter this country through one of the many ‘refugee resettlement’ programs currently being offered and funded by the U.S. government.
The kits can contain a variety of evidence, including underwear and swabs of a victim’s mouth, fingernails, genitals and any part of the skin where semen or saliva may be present. Blood and urine are also collected and bruises and other injuries are photographed.
A detective entered the woman’s rape kit into evidence and tried to contact her for a follow-up interview, but never heard back from her. Her case was closed in November 2014.
Though Seattle police submitted the woman’s rape kit in March 2015 for forensic testing, it doesn’t appear that it was analyzed at that time; court documents don’t indicate why. Police again requested that her kit be tested in June 2016 — but the results didn’t come back until April, nearly two years later. The DNA was matched to Hailu, the charges say.
In August, the case was assigned to another detective. By then, a victim advocate had located the woman, who agreed to come in for an interview.
According to the charges, at the time of the rape the woman was struggling with heroin addiction and after six months being sober, she went downtown looking to score drugs from her usual dealer. A man approached her, claimed he’d seen the dealer walk down a nearby alley, and offered to walk with her, the charges say.
Once in the alley, the man pushed her down, threatened to kill her and raped her, the charges say. Then he left.
Following the rape, the woman described hitting rock bottom and eventually overdosing.
She entered a one-year treatment program in February 2015.
By then, Hailu and a second man, Wolid Mohammed, had been identified as suspects in the February 2014 rape on Capitol Hill. They were charged with second-degree rape after their DNA was matched to DNA recovered from the then-21-year-old victim’s rape kit, court records show.
The woman had been out drinking with friends at R Place, but got separated from them when the bar closed. She encountered Hailu and Mohammed, who were both strangers to her, in an alley where they raped her, according to the charges.
Hailu and Mohammed pleaded guilty to the rape and other charges in August 2015.
