[Wonder how many more rapes were prevented?]

CBS 3: Local News
Address:http://kyw.com/Local%20News/ Changed:12:53 AM on Friday, January
7, 2005

Calvin Hughes reports the search for the Camden serial rapist is
over. Robber Was Camden Rapist
Jan 5, 2005 9:04 pm US/Eastern

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) A man who was killed while attempting to rob a store
last week was responsible for three recent rapes that had spread fear
among students and workers in the city’s relatively safe downtown area,
authorities said Wednesday.

Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi said the state police DNA
lab confirmed that Antonio Diaz Reyes, 32, was the rapist.

“The DNA results were a perfect match,” Sarubbi said at a news
conference.

The rapes in November and December were brazen daylight attacks at
knifepoint.
Investigators decided to check Reyes’ DNA against samples taken after
the three sexual assaults because the would-be robber used a method
similar to the earlier attacks.

Reyes’ death was captured on a store surveillance video. Authorities
said he entered the Camden City Wireless and Fishing Supply store in
East Camden on Friday afternoon and held the store owner’s wife at
knifepoint.

The owner, Ngoc Le, 28, saw what was happening, grabbed his gun, which
was legally registered, and told Reyes he would let him live if he
released his wife, atuhorities said. Reyes would not let the 26-year-old
woman go and threatened to kill her.

From about four feet away, Le fired the handgun once, hitting Reyes in
the head. Reyes died at the scene.

Reyes was the 54th and final homicide victim in a deadly 2004 in a city
that was named last by one crime analyst last year as the nation’s most
dangerous.

Le, who has an address in Philadelphia, will not be charged with any
crimes, Sarubbi said.

While authorities said they do not want to encourage vigilante justice,
they did speak of his killer as a hero.

“He was placed in the situation and he took the appropriate action,”
said Camden Police Chief Edwin J. Figueroa.

But he was also unlikely to be eligible for a $30,000 reward offered by
a Rutgers University’s Camden campus and a local law firm, Sarubbi said,
because he did not give a tip that led to the arrest of the rapist.

The sexual assault victims included a student at LEAP Academy Charter
High School, a Rutgers student and an employee at a downtown store. the
assaults all took place within a few blocks of one another-and a few
miles from where Reyes was killed.

After the assaults, county workers and college students who populate the
area during the day were cautioned not to walk alone outdoors.
Rutgers-Camden Police Chief Guy Still said it was unclear whether that
policy would continue now that the rapes have been solved.

“The solving of this crime begins to heal psychologically the wounds we
had here in the downtown area,” said Sarubbi, whose office is about two
blocks from where the rapes occurred.

Authorities are now trying to determine whether Reyes might have been
responsible for some unsolved robberies in Camden.