Man arrested in student rape

Philadelphia Police arrested a 35-year-old Philadelphia man Monday and charged him with the December 30th rape of a student in her 41st and Spruce street residence. University Police Commissioner John Kuprevich said yesterday that Raydell Luke, of 1620 Cecil B. Moore Street, was arraigned Tuesday on six felony counts, including rape and burglary, as well as nine misdemeanor charges. According to Kuprevich, Luke entered the victim's apartment via the fire escape in a burglary attempt. He said Luke sexually assaulted the victim during the burglary and the victim immediately reported the incident to Philadelphia Police. Philadelphia and University Police responded to the call along with University Police's Victim Support Services department. Kuprevich said the major breakthrough in the case came January 4th when University Police Detective Supervisor Mike Carroll and Detective Jane Curry recalled a case in November in which a man had been arrested for criminally trespassing on people's fire escapes. On November 26th, plainclothes police officers observed a man climbing on fire escapes of buildings in the 41st Street area but had not succeeded in gaining entry to any of the buildings. When the officers tried to pursue the man, they lost him but Luke was later caught by University Police Officers James Dunlap and Hugh McBreen. "[Carroll and Curry] both felt that this may be a possible lead in this case . . . to take a look at the suspect," Kuprevich said. "Officer Gillespie did do that and found out the subject did have a criminal record." The police assembled a photo spread of Luke, and the victim identified him as her assailant. A warrant was issued for Luke's arrest on January 16th and on the 20th, University and Philadelphia Police executed a search warrant on Luke's mother's residence at 4445 Holden Street. Luke, however, was not there. But Tuesday, two city housing police officers in the area, who had been informed to be on the lookout for Luke, arrested him and took him into custody at 4:30 p.m. Luke was arraigned yesterday and is being held at a city detention center on $25,000 bail. "This is one of those cases where officers back in November did a good job documenting the case," Kuprevich said. "The complainant cooperated, looked at the spread and now we have a positive ID and a defendant behind bars." Kuprevich said he did not know if a pre-trial hearing date had been set. "[The officers] worked real hard at it and it all came together for them," he said. "We now have a case solved and one person we are going to remove from our community as a threat." "I think the whole community can be proud of our officers," Kuprevich added. "They're out there, they're doing their job and it's working."

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