Durham man wanted in robbery, rape arrested in Florida

DURHAM, NC (WTVD) -- A Durham man wanted in connection with rape and kidnapping charges from a violent March encounter was arrested Monday in Florida.

Members of the U.S. Marshals Service Florida Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested Edil Albert Rodriguez at a hotel in Altamonte Springs, Florida.

Rodriguez, 25, is charged with first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree forcible sex offense, assault inflicting bodily injury, assault by strangulation, sexual battery, communicating threats, assault on a female and common-law robbery.

The charges involve an incident that was reported to Durham police on March 4.

Two women told officers they were giving a man a ride home from a club when he punched the female driver of the vehicle and pushed her out of the moving car on Interstate 85 near the U.S. 15-501 split. The man fled in the victim's vehicle. The second woman was still inside the car.

The driver who had been forced out of her car found an off-duty Durham police officer and told him what happened.

Officers found her vehicle about an hour later in Wrightwood Park on Anderson Street. Officers found the second woman, who had suffered serious eye and facial injuries and had been sexually assaulted, lying inside the vehicle.

Both women were taken to the hospital for treatment of injuries.

Rodriguez is being held in the Seminole County, Florida Jail without bond as he awaits extradition to Durham.