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Eustis police: DNA solves 2-year-old sexual battery case

EUSTIS, Fla. — A 2-year-old cold case rape investigation in Eustis has been solved, police announced Thursday.

Donte Tyrone McCain, 37, faces charges of sexual battery and occupied residential burglary.

Police said McCain broke into an elderly woman’s home in April 2015 and raped her while she slept in her living room. Police said he entered her window at 3:30 a.m.

"There was video surveillance that we found a figure crawling through her window," said Jim Franquiz with the Eustis Police Department.

The victim could not identify her attacker because he covered his face, police said. After the assault, McCain took her cellphone and cigarettes, police said.

McCain was arrested a month later on unrelated charges of resisting an officer without violence and providing a false name to police. Investigators also discovered he had a warrant for his arrest on charges of armed robbery, attempted carjacking and attempted kidnapping at a Walmart parking lot in Fruitland Park.

At the time of McCain’s arrest, he lived less than 2 miles from the victim’s home.

McCain was sentenced Feb. 15 to 20 years in a Florida state prison for the crimes.

While McCain was booked in prison at Lancaster Correctional Institution where he provided a DNA sample and it matched to the DNA in the rape investigation, police said.

"He doesn't remember anything and he denied it," Franquiz said.

The victim burst into tears when an officer told her an arrest was made, Channel 9's Janine Reyes said.

Eyewitness News looked into McCain's background and learned he was charged with rape in 2000 and 2004 and assaults on women in North Carolina. However he was found not guilty on the rape cases so his DNA never existed in the CODIS system.

It is up to the state attorney's office if prosecutors pursue charges on the rape arrest, which could lead to a longer prison sentence if convicted.