A 38-year-old man is accused of raping a Vancouver woman after escaping the day before from the prison camp at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, federal prosecutors said.
Federal authorities discovered Alexander Cain Kristovich was missing after a bunk count turned up short at 3:36 a.m. on April 25.
The next day, a woman in Vancouver told Clark County Sheriff’s Office that she had picked up Kristovich after he had escaped from prison and took him back to her apartment, where he sexually assaulted her, according to an affidavit unsealed Friday.
The woman described Kristovich as her “romantic correspondence,” Zachary Conlin, a deputy U.S. Marshal and criminal investigator, wrote in the affidavit.
The woman alerted an employee at a nearby elementary school. The school employee urged the woman to report the assault to the sheriff’s office, and the employee also called the prison.
Kristovich is accused of stealing the woman’s car, cell phone and purse containing her debit and credit cards.
The stolen car was found abandoned April 27 in the parking lot of the Burlington Coat Factory in Edmonds, Washington, according to the affidavit.
A U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force arrested Kristovich in Carson City, Nevada, on May 14 and seized a rifle from him, according to prosecutors.
Kristovich was serving a five-year sentence, convicted last year in federal court in Washington of trafficking 50 grams of heroin, at least 28 grams of methamphetamine and at least 5,000 fake oxycodone pills laced with fentanyl, according to court records. At the time, he also possessed more than a dozen guns, according to federal prosecutors. His defense lawyer in Washington previously described him as a former member of the U.S. Navy who was dishonorably discharged and who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder.
He appeared briefly Friday afternoon by video before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jolie A. Russo in federal court in Portland.
Michael Benson, an assistant federal public defender, entered a not guilty plea on Kristovich’s behalf to an allegation of escape from the federal Bureau of Prisons. Kristovich remains in custody and is scheduled to return to court next Friday.
“Given the fact he was serving a significant sentence on a drug case, we think he’s a risk of flight and a danger to the public,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lewis Burkhart told the judge.
Kristovich also faces allegations of second-degree rape, second-degree assault, second-degree robbery and theft of a motor vehicle in Clark County.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
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