{"id":101841,"date":"2026-01-01T01:24:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T01:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/101841\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T01:24:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T01:24:21","slug":"dna-match-leads-police-to-suspect-21-years-after-florida-woman-violently-attacked-in-her-home-sheriffs-office-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/101841\/","title":{"rendered":"DNA match leads police to suspect 21 years after Florida woman violently attacked in her home, sheriff’s office says"},"content":{"rendered":"

DNA<\/a> has led to the arrest of a man who the Collier County Sheriff’s Office says broke into a woman’s home and sexually battered her at knifepoint more than 21 years ago.<\/p>\n

“This was a heinous crime, and our detectives have been intent on solving it since day one,” Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said in a Facebook post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the sheriff’s office, during the early morning hours of Aug. 28, 2004, a masked intruder armed with a knife sexually battered a woman inside of her home.<\/p>\n

At the time, DNA collected during the original investigation didn’t initially produce a match.<\/p>\n

But that all changed on Dec. 9 of this year, the sheriff’s office said.<\/p>\n

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) notified the Collier County Sheriff’s Office of a possible break in the case.<\/p>\n

\"cbsmiami-rossel-moises-ponce-chirinos-1.jpg<\/p>\n

Rossel Moises Ponce Chirinos.<\/p>\n

Cocke County (Tennessee) Sheriff’s Office<\/p>\n

How an arrest in Tennessee led to a break in the 2004 Collier County case<\/p>\n

The sheriff’s office said that a recent search of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) DNA database, indicated that a potential match had occurred between DNA taken from Rossel Moises Ponce Chirinos, 46, and DNA from the 2004 sexual battery investigation.<\/p>\n

Collier County Sheriff’s Office detectives learned that Chirinos was in jail in Tennessee for driving without a valid license, in which a DNA sample<\/a> was taken and submitted into CODIS.<\/p>\n

In coordination with the Cocke County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee<\/a>, a new DNA sample was obtained from Chirinos, and within days the FDLE confirmed that the DNA sample from Chirinos matched the foreign DNA collected during the 2004 sexual battery investigation.<\/p>\n

“We never give up,” Rambosk said. “No matter how much time has passed, we will continue using every investigative tool available to identify offenders and pursue justice for victims.”<\/p>\n

On Dec. 23, detectives were able to obtain a warrant signed by a Collier County circuit judge for Chirinos’ arrest on charges of sexual battery and armed burglary.<\/p>\n

The warrant was then served on Chirinos at the Cocke County jail, and arraignment s are being made for his extradition back to Collier County, the sheriff’s office said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DNA has led to the arrest of a man who the Collier County Sheriff’s Office says broke into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[265,25786,37772,28,30,29,10195],"class_list":["post-101841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-crime","tag-dna","tag-dna-testing","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-tennessee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}