Suspect fathered child in US kidnap case

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CLEVELAND, Ohio: Preliminary DNA results Friday confirmed that the man accused of kidnapping and raping three US women had fathered the girl rescued with them this week, Ohio’s attorney general announced.

Ariel Castro, a 52-year-old unemployed bus driver, is accused of snatching the three women in separate incidents around a decade ago and holding them captive in his home.

They were freed last Monday, after one of the victims, 27-year-old Amanda Berry, managed to call out to a neighbour, who kicked in the door of the suspect’s home, allowing her and the six-year-old daughter she bore while held hostage to escape.

“The Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) received a sample of Castro’s DNA late yesterday afternoon, and forensic scientists worked throughout the night to confirm that Castro is the father of the six-year-old girl,” state attorney general Mike DeWine said in a statement.

Castro is charged with kidnapping 23-year-old Gina DeJesus and 32-year-old Michelle Knight in addition to Berry and the child, as well as with raping the women over the course of the decade in his Cleveland home.

Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty has said he would seek to press additional charges, including ones that carry the death penalty.

“I fully intend to seek charges for each and every act of sexual violence, rape, each day of kidnapping, every felonious assault, all his attempted murders and each act of aggravated murder he committed by terminating pregnancies” for which he himself was responsible, McGinty said. — AFP