VERO BEACH, FL– The Vero Beach Police Department was able to identify a woman’s attacker after she struck him in the face with her phone and managed to get his blood on it.
The incident occurred near the victim’s hotel room on New Year’s Day.
The victim told police she was celebrating at a bar when she encountered the suspect and briefly spoke with him.
At some point, the woman decided to walk back to her hotel and that’s when the suspect approached her again and started following her.
Once the woman got to the parking lot of her hotel, the suspect allegedly told the victim, “You need to face the fact that you are gonna get raped tonight,” and began attacking her.
During the attack, the woman told police she hit the suspect in the face with her phone.
While examining the phone, authorities noticed specs of dry blood and took it into evidence.
On April 4th, authorities received the DNA results linking 30-year-old Robert Coleman Jr., a registered sex offender, to the investigation.
Coleman was brought in for a police interview but told authorities that he never met the victim and that he was not in the hotel parking lot.
Authorities noticed a wound near Coleman’s left eye that matched a laceration that could have been caused by the victim’s phone. Officials also collected DNA from Coleman during the interview and confirmed that the DNA on the victim’s phone was Coleman’s.
Coleman has been arrested on sexual battery charges.
He was taken to the Indian River County Jail on a $150,000 bail.