Conn. seeks to extradite suspected rapist to Va.

Conn. seeks to extradite suspected rapist to Va.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut prosecutors will try to send a man suspected in rape cases along the East Coast to Virginia, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

New Haven State’s Attorney Michael Dearington would not discuss why Connecticut had decided to extradite Aaron Thomas, of New Haven.

The 40-year-old Thomas pleaded not guilty in March to a charge of raping a woman in New Haven in 2007. Authorities say DNA confirmed he is responsible for rapes and other attacks on 17 women from Virginia to Connecticut.

Joseph Lopez, the public defender representing Thomas, said a hearing is scheduled in New Haven Superior Court on Nov. 28 to consider his motion for a speedy trial and a challenge to the extradition attempt.

The first assault that authorities say they connected to Thomas was in 1997 in Forestville, Md., when a man pulled a gun on a woman and forced her into the woods, then fled on a bicycle. Seven months later, a woman was raped behind a restaurant garbage bin in Maryland. The following year a 16-year-old girl was raped, also in Maryland. Authorities said the same man then started attacking women in Virginia, until two victims were raped in the same attack in Maryland in 2001.

Police said the suspect resurfaced in 2006 in New England, peeping on a girl doing her homework in Rhode Island before her screams scared him off. Two teenage trick-or-treaters were raped in 2009 in Woodbridge, Va.

Authorities had mounted a large-scale public outreach campaign, putting up electronic billboards in the states where the attacks occurred and in neighboring states. DNA from a cigarette that police saw Thomas discard after leaving a New Haven court was used to confirm that Thomas was the man wanted in the attacks, a prosecutor has said.