A man has been arrested and charged with raping an 8-year-old girl after breaking into her East San Jose, California home last week in what investigators are describing as a stranger assault, authorities said.
The assault was reported about 7:35 a.m. Friday at a home on Damsen Drive, off North Jackson Avenue near Regional Medical Center, according to a San Jose police news release.
According to accounts given to police from the victim and her grandfather, the child was playing in the home when she was grabbed by a man who entered the property, then took to her a room where he locked the door and raped her.
After the man let the girl go, she ran to her grandfather, who chased the man out of the home and called 911. About an hour later, a police officer spotted a man behind the hospital — about a mile from the home — who matched a description given by the girl and arrested him.
The man who was arrested has been identified as 24-year-old Dupree Kenneth Hornsby, and he has since been charged with eight felony counts mostly involving sexual assault of a child, including rape, as well as kidnapping and burglary. He was being held without bail in the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas.
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Prosecutors credited the girl’s bravery in providing a description of her attacker in the moments after her assault, and the officer who found Hornsby.
“This nightmare of a crime has shaken all of us,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “The alert police officer who saw and arrested this predator just hours later, and before anyone else was hurt, is a credit to the badge and our community.”
Police said there is no known connection between Hornsby, whose last known address is in Stockton, and the girl or her family.
The girl was treated and interviewed at the county’s Child Advocacy Center, near O’Connor Hospital, which was launched earlier this year to put resources and services for sexual-assault survivors under one roof. One of the aims is to decrease the number of interviews and visits they have to complete with criminal investigators and support advocates, and minimize having to repeatedly re-live their trauma.
Anyone with information for investigators can contact Detective Jonathan Yue or Detective Sgt. Samuel Marquardt with the SJPD Sexual Assaults Investigations Unit at 408-277-4102 or leave a tip with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at svcrimestoppers.org.
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