DNA lifted from a robbery victim's car may have led Boca Raton detectives to the man behind an attack in a woman's garage five months ago.

Lab test results released last week match DNA from the September crime scene to Reache Evans, 36, of Boca Raton, police said.

Evans was arrested Friday on a charge of home invasion robbery.

He is accused of walking into a woman's garage on Southwest 12th Road and grabbing her purse as she arrived home from shopping, police said. The two struggled until the purse strap broke and Evans was able to run off with it, police said.

Crime-scene technicians lifted the DNA from the exterior of the woman's car and sent it to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office crime lab. After the match was made, police showed the victim a photo lineup and she identified Evans as her attacker.

Boca Raton police have made several arrests thanks to recent advances in DNA technology.

Blood samples collected at the scene of a home robbery in 2010 led to an arrest 10 months later. The robber had cut himself as he crawled through a ripped window screen to get inside.

A major coup for Boca Raton police was a 2010 arrest in a cold case more than a decade old. John McKenzie, of Boynton Beach, was arrested for attacking a woman in March 1989 and raping her in an apartment.

He sliced off the woman's bathing-suit top, cut her hand and assaulted her. Investigators collected DNA from the scene, but at the time, technology didn't exist to identify him.

McKenzie was convicted of sexual battery and is serving a life sentence in prison. Recent DNA tests linked him to another Boca Raton rape case from 1987, resulting in additional sexual-battery charges against him.

A shared law enforcement database allows police to match DNA samples collected years ago to offenders in the system. The more the database grows, the more likely a match can be made.

apcampbell@tribune.com or 561-243-6609.

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DNA technology leads to arrest in Boca Raton home robbery