Inmate charged in Galleria attack By MÓNICA GUZMÁN A 23-year-old Texas prison inmate was charged Friday in the August 2003 aggravated sexual assault of a woman in a Galleria-area parking garage, police said. Police said DNA evidence linked Juan Reyes Solis, already in prison for two unrelated burglaries and criminal mischief, to the assault. Solis lived in Houston before he was imprisoned in October 2003. If convicted of the sexual assault, Solis faces up to life in prison. "Modern technology solved it," said investigator Keith McMurtry of the Houston Police Department. "There's no getting around it." Solis may also be behind at least two other attacks in the same area that summer, McMurtry added. "There's a possibility ... of a match in other cases," he said. Police were led to Solis when DNA samples taken from him and entered into a state database matched evidence collected from the August sexual attack. The Department of Public Safety's crime lab in Austin confirmed the match, police said. A second sample was collected and tested, and it also tied Solis to the crime, McMurtry said. The attacks began in July 2003, McMurtry said, when the "Galleria rapist" grabbed and fondled two women in parking garages near the mall. The women in those attacks managed to escape. On Aug. 30, a 19-year-old mall employee was forced into her car at a Galleria parking garage and taken to another location, where she was raped and robbed. She later escaped. "The cycle of violence kept increasing," McMurtry said. "He went very quickly from theft to burglary to assault." Solis will be returned to Houston from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. |
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