QUEENS — Police arrested an alleged serial sexual predator Wednesday six years after his crimes thanks to DNA evidence from an unrelated arrest.
Mark Andrade, a 45-year-old Queens man, is allegedly responsible for a series of sexual assaults spanning two years, police said. DNA evidence connects him to the assault and rape of joggers in a Queens park in 2011 and 2012.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Thursday that officers never gave up on the case.
“We never really lost sight of it,” he said.
DNA evidence was obtained in two of the Forest Park assaults, police said. The sexual assaults began in March of 2011 and ended in August of 2013.
During the assaults, police released this sketch. (NYPD)
In once instance, the man tased a 69-year-old jogger, pushed her to the ground and then raped her. Police obtained DNA evidence during an earlier assault on March 29, 2013 when Andrade allegedly struggled with his victim.
She pulled a beer bottle from his pocket and threw it away, police said. Officials later retrieved that bottle in the park and swabbed it for DNA.
That DNA finally found a match last week in Nassau County, officials said. Police there arrested Andrade on grand larceny charges. They entered his DNA into CODIS and it matched the DNA from the beer bottle.
Andrade has not yet been charged for all six assaults. Police have only charged him so far in one assault, but hope to charge him in all six.
