Tulsa County man facing rape charges a decade after alleged crime

TULSA, Okla. — Ten years after the crime, a Tulsa County man now faces first-degree rape charges.

Tulsa Police said it’s all because the victim came forward and got a sexual assault examination done, commonly called a rape kit.

FOX23 has reported on the work police are catching up on to test any untested kit.

This is another example of why it’s so important.

In this case, police were able to present charges to the district attorney’s office, and the man was charged earlier this month.

It won’t be hard for police to catch the suspect either because he’s sitting in jail already in federal custody for some serious crimes.

A 2016 photo shows Daishad Lucas back from when he was in the Department of Corrections on a robbery conviction that year. Now he faces a first-degree rape charge dating even further back.

“A CODIS hit came up to Mr. Lucas,” said Darin Ehrenrich, Tulsa Police Lieutenant.

A CODIS hit is when DNA links a suspect to a crime.

In this case, it was a sexual assault kit for an alleged rape.

Ehrenrich said it’s so important for victims to report the crime and have a nurse perform the exam to collect DNA evidence.

“I think this case is a great example of the benefit of that,” Ehrenrich said.

Court records said a victim told police that Lucas picked her up near East Xyler Street back in 2014.

They hit a couple of bars and then the woman reported to police that she lost consciousness.

“She wakes up in the back seat of the vehicle. Her clothes are disheveled, they make a comment that led her to believe they had made some sexual contact with her and began taking her purse from her,” Ehrenrich said.

The records said Lucas told her “Shut up, or we will do it again.” And he began hitting her with a handgun.

According to court records filed this month, the original officer who responded to the case reported that the victim had blood around her lips, lacerations on her lower and upper lip, side lacerations, bruising, and several bloody areas on the victim’s body.

After the initial report, the case went cold.

“The detective was never able to locate her and this went inactive back in 2014,” Ehrenrich said.

That all changed this year, 10 years since the reported rape when DNA collected in the rape kit back then was finally tested.

Since 2017, TPD has spent $4 million in grant funding to get kits tested.

As of April, police said they’ve tested 1,300 out of the more than 3,000 kits that weren’t originally tested for various reasons.

TPD plans to continue the work even when the grant money runs out.

“We are already starting the process of making sure we get the funding to renew that to start another three-year cycle,” Ehrenrich said.

As for the case against Lucas, he’s not seen as a threat to the public while the rape case is pending.

That’s because the man is in federal custody after pleading guilty just days ago in a gun and drug trafficking case from earlier this year.

Police said that even if you aren’t ready to move forward pressing charges, get a test kit done at the time of the crime.

Police are identifying and catching serial rapists by testing these old kits that may not have been tested at the time if the victim didn’t want to move forward or if the suspect was identified already.