Man arrested in string of sexual assaults dating back 27 years, Arizona cops say

A man has been arrested in a string of sexual assaults dating back to 1998, Arizona officials said.

In 1998, a 17-year-old reported that while walking home, a man, later identified as Abraham Ramirez, offered a ride and ended up punching her in the face before sexually assaulting her, officials said in court documents, according to AZ Family.

In 1999, an 18-year-old woman said she had been sexually assaulted after a man approached her and forced her into his car at gunpoint, the outlet reported.

Ramirez is also accused of two other sexual assaults in 2013, according to AZ Family.

Thirty years ago, Ramirez was arrested in California in connection to a 1994 kidnapping and sexual assault, and although he was not convicted, officials got his DNA, officers told AZ Central, but the DNA wasn’t uploaded into a national database as that was not yet mandated.

That victim consented to a sexual assault kit, allowing officials to collect DNA, and after the Ventura County deputies submitted the DNA to the national database this July, it came back as a match in these other cases, officials told the outlet.

“Investigators learned the DNA from all four sexual assaults matched the same suspect. However, the person belonging to that profile was not able to be identified, as they were not currently in the system,” Donna Rossi, communications director for the Phoenix Police Department, said in a news release obtained by AZ Central.

Ramirez was arrested and is now facing multiple counts of kidnapping and sexual assault, officials told KJZZ.