New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Former Conn. man faces charges in death of NY woman
A former Connecticut man was jailed without bail Friday after being extradited from California to face charges in the strangulation death of a woman he had met on a dating app, prosecutors in New York said.
Danueal Drayton, 31, from Hamden, was arraigned in Queens on charges including murder, sexual misconduct and grand larceny in the July 2018 death of Samantha Stewart, a 29-yearold nurse he had met on Tinder.
Drayton has a history of violence against women in multiple states, including his home state Connecticut where he was arrested five times between 2011 and 2018.
According to the state court system, he was found guilty of strangulation and unlawful restraint in 2013 and sentenced to five years in jail.
Those charges stemmed from domestic abuse incidents in 2011 and 2012. According to an East Haven police report, officials were called to a local residence where they found a woman with severe bruising in a semi-conscious state.
The woman, who Drayton had been dating, had told him she wanted to break up with him a few days before, she told police. She said he grabbed her, forced her onto the bed, and began assaulting her.
In March 2012, the same woman was interviewed by New Haven police while in a hospital, where she had marks on her throat and a neck collar on. She told police Drayton had assaulted her a second time after she asked to end their relationship again.
He was arrested by Waterbury police for two incidents in 2015 and found guilty later that year on several charges, including violating a protective order, violating probation and unlawful restraint.
Drayton was also arrested in New York on June 30, 2018, after an alleged battery incident in Long Island. In that instance, a Long Island woman told the New York Daily News Drayton had choked and assaulted her on June 13, 2018.
He was arraigned and a few days later a Nassau County judge set Drayton free at a July 5, 2018 hearing without bail after being told he had “no contacts” with the criminal justice system, according to a transcript obtained by the New York Daily News.
On July 17, 2018, just days after he was released and while still on probation in Connecticut, Stewart's body was discovered in her Queens apartment by her father, according to the Associated Press.
Authorities said Drayton went on a date with Stewart on July 16, 2018.
Once inside Stewart's apartment, Drayton beat and strangled Stewart and “engaged in sexual conduct” with her dead body, District Attorney Melinda Katz said.
Drayton then stole Stewart's credit cards and used one of them to buy a plane ticket to California, prosecutors said.
Drayton was accused of trying to choke another woman to death in North Hollywood shortly after he arrived in California, authorities said. The North Hollywood case is pending.
Drayton was extradited from California on Thursday. He faces up to 25 years to life in prison for Stewart's killing.
Katz called the nurse's death “a brutal crime that makes every person using a dating app fearful.” She said Stewart “was duped into going out on a date with the defendant, who played a charmer online but was in fact an alleged sexual predator.”