CONNECTCOMMENTEMAILMORE
A 29-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of sexual battery of a woman he met through a dating app last year.
Dion Johnson, of Winter Green, was arrested Saturday and charged with sexual battery and larceny. He was booked into the Escambia County Jail with a $101,000 bond and remained in custody as of Tuesday afternoon.
The woman who Johnson is accused of assaulting was pulled over by police around 4:45 a.m. Oct. 8, 2018, on suspicion of DUI, according to Johnson’s arrest report.
The woman told officers she believed she had been drugged and sexually assaulted, the report states. She had scratches and red marks on her face and did not recall how they got there.
Officers told the woman if she was falsely claiming to have been abused to get out of a DUI, she would be arrested for making a false police report. The woman stated she certain she had been drugged, the report states.
She was taken to the hospital for a medical evaluation and was interviewed by an Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputy.
The woman told the deputy she met Johnson through the dating app Plenty Of Fish and went to his house the evening of Oct. 7 to watch a Jacksonville Jaguars football game with him and his two cousins.
She said she drank several shots of alcohol and passed out, waking up on Johnson’s bedroom floor around 11 p.m. without remembering how she got there, according to the report.
She told Johnson she wanted to wait to drive home until she sobered up, but Johnson told her to leave because he was going somewhere and didn’t want her left in the house, the report stated.
The woman walked to her car, fell asleep while parked in the driveway and woke up several hours later and drove to a Whataburger, the report stated. While paying for food, she noticed $43 missing from her purse.
She fell back asleep inside her car in the Whataburger parking lot, woke up, started driving home and was pulled over on suspicion of DUI, the report stated.
At the hospital, samples were collected from the woman and her clothes and were sent to laboratories to be analyzed. The urinalysis test results did not reveal any illegal substances in the woman’s system, the report stated.
More than seven months later on June 11, 2019, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement submitted a laboratory report advising that a DNA match had been found between a DNA profile taken from the woman and a “qualifying offender sample,” identified as Johnson, the report stated.
“Based on the above facts and circumstances, there is sufficient probable cause to believe that (the woman) was sexually battered by Johnson,” the report stated.
Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at colinwarrenhicks@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.
CONNECTCOMMENTEMAILMORE
Read or Share this story: https://www.pnj.com/story/news/crime/2019/08/27/man-accused-sexual-battery-woman-he-met-plenty-fish-dating-app/2130230001/
