WASHINGTON - Six years after D.C. police began looking for DNA in hundreds of backlogged sexual assault cases, the work is paying off.

Suspects have been identified through matches in the national DNA databank and arrests have been made.

Just this week police arrested a D.C. man for the 2006 rape of a teenage girl.

Without the DNA, the cases would likely have gone unsolved.

For much of the last decade, evidence in sexual assault cases sat untouched in storage in part because the district didn't have its own crime lab and the FBI was overwhelmed with cases related to terror.

A dilemma eventually solved with the help of grant money and several different labs.

Case in point.

Michael Anthony Davies, 31, was arrested Wednesday and charged with first degree sexual abuse--accused of raping a young girl inside a southwest Washington apartment building in April of 2006.

According to the charging document, detectives were unable to identify a suspect until Davies DNA profile matched the evidence in a "cold hit."

According to the charging document the 17-year-old said she had just returned from the store, it was just after eight o'clock at night and she was riding the elevator to the fifth floor in the apartment complex where she lived. She says as she got out of the elevator, a man who was in the elevator with her followed, he grabbed her by the arm said I want to get to know you better. She resisted, but he grabbed her by the waist and dragged her into a stairwell where she was raped.

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DNA Matches Close Sexual Assault Cases