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Two men arrested in rape cases

One of the incidents happened late Tuesday night near Clearwater-Largo Road; the other, which is unrelated, in 2003.

By JACOB H. FRIES
Published July 21, 2005

LARGO - Detectives have arrested two men accused of rape in separate, unrelated incidents, authorities said Wednesday.

In one case, a man grabbed his victim and dragged her to a vacant lot, investigators said. In the other, which dates back to 2003, a woman was raped while she was intoxicated and sleeping.

Both suspects were booked into the Pinellas County Jail on Tuesday evening.

According to Largo police, a woman in her 40s was walking to get a beverage at the 7-Eleven on Clearwater-Largo Road shortly before midnight Tuesday. The woman, who lived nearby, never made it.

Benjamin Patrick O'Donnell, 21, grabbed her from behind at the corner of 4th Avenue NW and Ridge Road - a block from the convenience store - and covered her mouth, said Largo police Detective Keith Barton.

At 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, O'Donnell pulled the woman about 50 yards into a darkened lot overgrown with weeds and bushes, where he forced her to the ground and raped her, Barton said. He covered her mouth, but she was able to scream a few times.

"He must have gotten scared because he jumps off of her and runs away," Barton said.

The attacker left on a child's BMX-style bike.

Afterward, the woman used a cigarette lighter to find her torn clothing and ran home, where her roommates immediately called 911. The woman gave police a description of her attacker and noted his bicycle.

That detail led investigators to identify O'Donnell, Barton said.

About an hour and a half before the attack, a police officer had stopped O'Donnell on the bike because it had no light, Barton said. The officer did not issue a citation, but he ran O'Donnell's name through a database to check on outstanding warrants.

A second officer stopped him about 30 minutes later and did the same thing.

Those checks placed O'Donnell in the area, making him a suspect, and officers showed the victim a series of photographs of suspects. She picked out his, Barton said.

Barton found O'Donnell, who works as a mover, living with his grandmother on Ulmerton Road, and he gave varying accounts of the incident. Barton said O'Donnell ultimately admitted to having sex with the woman but said he had paid her for it.

The woman's injuries and her emotional state told a different story, one of a brutal attack rather than consensual sex, the detective said.

O'Donnell remained in the county jail Wednesday in lieu of $200,000 bail on charges of sexual battery and kidnapping. Records show he has been arrested in Florida once before on a 2003 charge of disorderly conduct, to which he pleaded no contest.

The other man accused of rape Tuesday was Christopher Sanders, 23, in connection with a case dating back to May 7, 2003.

That morning, a woman woke up half-dressed on a couch of an unfamiliar Largo home after a night of drinking at a club on Ulmerton Road, according to an arrest warrant. She could not recall how she got there, and when a man appeared in the house, she asked him who he was.

He identified himself as a friend of a man she knew.

Believing she had been raped, the woman went to a hospital, where she was examined and DNA samples were collected. Investigators later showed her photographs of suspects and she picked out Sanders, the warrant states.

Pinellas County sheriff's detectives tried to talk with Sanders, but he declined to answer questions and requested an attorney, said sheriff's spokesman Mac McMullen. Detectives did not think they had enough cause to obtain a search warrant seeking a sample of his DNA, McMullen said.

But in July 2004, Sanders was convicted of drug offenses, records show. His DNA was entered into the state's database of convicted offenders.

Then, on Jan. 19 of this year, sheriff's detectives learned a match had been found between Sanders' DNA and the sample taken from the woman two years earlier, according to the warrant.

Sanders, who was sentenced to more than two years for the drug conviction, was being held in the county jail Wednesday.

Staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

[Last modified July 21, 2005, 00:56:18]