Police: Rape suspect arrested after a statewide crime spree
The man accused of barging into a Casselberry apartment with a knife and raping a woman is also suspected of a crime spree ranging from Tallahassee to South Miami, police said.
The spree ended when Titusville officers arrested Benjamin Hovan about 11:30 a.m. Thursday. Hovan, 32, faces charges of home invasion, sexual battery and kidnapping in the Casselberry case.
He’s also a suspect or person of interest in several crimes across the state, police said.
“We are very joyful that the community can now feel safe,” Casselberry police Capt. Brenda Brandenberger said.
According to a police report, two women were having a “girls night in” at the Stonecastle Apartments on Saturday when they heard a knock on the door. Thinking it was a delivery, they answered — which is when Hovan, armed with a knife, pushed his way inside, police say.
The women said he ordered them to the floor, plundered their bags and several rooms, then ordered them into a bedroom, where he raped one of them, the report said. Casselberry police say Hovan has no connection to the city and they’re unsure why he choose that apartment complex and those victims.
The women asked their attacker what they could do to make him stop. He said he wanted money, the report said. He made the women get into a Toyota Matrix belonging to one of them and drive him to Maitland, where he ordered one to get money from an ATM near a Publix store.
The woman instead told a Publix employee to call 911.
Hovan, worried she was taking too long, forced the other woman out of the car and drove away, police said.
Officers in Maitland found the Matrix abandoned near U.S. Highway 17-92 and Versailles Circle on Tuesday, officials said. Casselberry police identified Hovan as their suspect after they discovered his fingerprints at the scene, Brandenberger said.
In a wanted bulletin issued Wednesday, they warned that he “should be considered armed and dangerous.”
At least three law enforcement agencies are looking into additional crimes they believe Hovan might have committed across the state over the past week.
Casselberry police said Hovan, a Tallahassee native, reached out to his father before Saturday’s home invasion. He said he had done “something bad” and requested gas money, Brandenberger said. Hovan’s family have told police that he may have been experiencing mental health issues.
“He traveled a very large distance and was just committing any crime he could to survive whatever crisis he was in,” she said.
On Sunday — the day after the home invasion — there was a residential burglary in Maitland. Hovan is a person of interest in that case, Maitland police Lt. Louis Grindle said.
Authorities believe Hovan made his way south before ending up in Titusville, where he was discovered in a car that had been stolen recently from South Miami.
He admitted that he was the person police had been looking for, Brandenburger said. He was arrested after a short struggle that ended with officers using a Taser on Hovan.