A registered sex offender who served a prison sentence for a sex crime in the 1990s has been booked with attempted forcible rape of a Chalmette woman attacked in her vehicle July 20 after she left a Chalmette bar, Sheriff Jack Stephens said.
Rene Murrell, 33, of Hopedale in eastern St. Bernard, was arrested Thursday, July 24 and is being held in Parish Prison in lieu of a $100,000 bond, the sheriff said.
Sheriff’s detectives found and arrested Murrell after both the victim and two of her friends who saw the man running away after the alleged attack identified him from photo line-ups they were shown separately, Sheriff Stephens said.
The woman reported she had gotten in her truck after leaving a bar early Sunday, July 20, when a man grabbed her and pulled her from the vehicle and attempted to rape her, the sheriff said.
She punched the attacker several times and managed to get away and run back to the bar where she told two male friends what had happened, and based on the description of him and his clothing, they began searching for the attacker.
The sheriff said the friends saw a man matching the description who was running near East St. Bernard Highway. He got away but the pursuers got close enough that one of the people in the truck recognized the man as a patron from a bar and was able to give a name to sheriff’s detectives.
Detectives put together a photographic line-up with six pictures and the victim chose Murrell’s photo as the man who had attacked her, while her two friends, shown the six photos separately, identified Murrell’s picture as the man they chased, Sheriff Stephens said.
A warrant for the arrest of Murrell was signed by a judge and Murrell was later found and arrested at his place of employment, the sheriff said.
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