THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997 TAG: 9701250298
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 67 lines
A snapshot from a stolen camera and a fingerprint left in a Virginia Beach home have pointed police to a suspect in Miami in a burglary and the subsequent sexual assaults of a mother and her 9-year-old daughter, investigators said.
The snapshot showed the young Virginia Beach girl in front of her elementary school, said law enforcement sources who asked not to be named. The camera was stolen Jan. 12 after a burglar ransacked the Magic Hollow home, tied up the mother and daughter and repeatedly assaulted them. An evidence technician lifted a fingerprint from the scene which was later traced to the suspect in Miami.
The camera was confiscated three days later from a man in Florida after police arrested him for a strikingly similar crime. Florida police developed the film.
When they learned the elementary school in the picture was in Virginia Beach, they contacted local police, setting off a scramble to link the Miami suspect with the sexual assaults here.
On Friday night, Virginia Beach detectives were preparing to fly to Miami, where 22-year-old Jason M. Sunday is in jail. Although police here would not say Sunday was a suspect in the Virginia Beach sexual assaults because he hadn't been charged, several law-enforcement sources speaking on condition they not be named confirmed that evidence linked him to the crime.
The suspect, an Indiana jail escapee, was caught in Key West, Fla., when authorities traced a cellular call made on the Miami victim's stolen phone.
Police records and news accounts show that Sunday and two other inmates escaped from an Indiana jail on New Year's Day. Sunday had been incarcerated after police charged him with the rape and attempted murder of a Kokomo, Ind., woman in December.
The three escapees headed to Norfolk, where one of the fugitives, 22-year-old George R. Slaughter, reportedly has a brother in the Navy, authorities said.
Florida news accounts said Sunday told authorities that the fugitives were in a stolen car when they were turned away from a Norfolk base. It wasn't clear which base they went to or why they were turned away. Sunday told Miami police that the escapees later stole a 1996 Saturn in Norfolk.
Shortly after Sunday and Slaughter arrived here, Virginia Beach police began investigating a spate of burglaries in a three-block section of Magic Hollow.
Slaughter was arrested Thursday after police found him sleeping in a vacant Magic Hollow house. He was charged with several of the neighborhood burglaries.
But Sunday, suspected of at least three burglaries and the two sexual assaults, headed south. The third fugitive, 26-year-old Detroit resident Craig Wilkins, is still on the lam.
According to Florida news accounts, Sunday is accused of breaking into the home of a Miami attorney on Jan. 15, three days after the Virginia Beach assaults. The intruder ordered the resident to undress, but was scared off when the woman's roommate returned.
Sunday was caught later that day in Key West. He told Florida police he chose Key West because it ``looked like a cool place down here with all the chicks on the beach,'' according to a Florida newspaper.
If Sunday is charged as expected with the Virginia Beach burglaries and sexual assaults, police may have to wait to bring him here because of the charges he faces in two other states. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Jason M. Sunday
KEYWORDS: ARREST BURGLARIES SEXUAL ASSAULT