Police make DNA match from 2-year-old attempted rape

Columbus police have announced a DNA match in a two-year-old attempted rape.

Police say that the DNA of Sherman Justice, 19, matches evidence from an attack on a woman on the Near East Side in January 2004. The woman was walking on the street in the early evening when a young man forced her at gunpoint to enter an abandoned house at 714 Miller Ave. Inside the house the man tried to rape the woman, but he was scared away by noise at a neighboring house.

Justice's DNA was acquired by law enforcement officials because he was a convicted offender. According to Franklin County Municipal Court records, Justice was arrested and convicted last year of deliberately providing false information to Reynoldsburg police.

Columbus police are searching for Justice, whom they classify as a fugitive. Police consider Justice to be armed and dangerous, and they are requesting that anyone with information on his whereabouts contact police, or anonymously through Central Ohio Crime Stoppers, (614) 645-8477.