Slay suspect is tied to rape
A man accused of killing a Queens nurse earlier this month has been linked to a rape in Brooklyn — and may have many more victims, police said Thursday.
Danuel Drayton, 27, will be facing murder and rape charges when he is extradited back to the East Coast from California.
He has been charged with strangling 29-year-old Samantha Stewart inside her Springfield Gardens apartment on July 17.
Cops describe Drayton as a sexual predator who hunts victims on social media sites such as Tinder.
“It is believed by us that this individual uses dating websites to meet women and then victimizes these women,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said during a press conference Thursday.
After Stewart was found dead, investigators linked her case with a rape on 14th St. in Park Slope, Brooklyn, officials said. The 23-yearold victim said he met Drayton through Tinder. He allegedly choked her unconscious and raped her.
“Two independent investigations that as they progressed led our detectives to the same individual,” he said. “That individual was tracked across the country.”
When members of the NYPD Regional Task Force found Drayton in California, he was holding a woman against her will.
“They potentially saved her life,” Shea said.
Police said that Drayton had met Stewart on a dating site. At the time, he was facing criminal trespass and strangulation charges for attacking his ex-girlfriend in Inwood Park in Nassau County on June 16.
During a court hearing on July 5, a judge ordered him released on his own recognizance against the demands of the Nassau County District Attorney, who wanted him held on $7,500 bail.
Stewart was wrapped in a blanket and badly beaten when she was found by her brother and father in the apartment just after 9 p.m. Her teeth were missing and her head was lying in a pool of her own blood.
The medical examiner’s office later determined that the nurse was strangled.
Shea believes that Drayton had victimized other women over the last several weeks.