Months after a Toronto special constable was accused of sexual assault and arrested in Atlanta’s airport, prosecutors in West Virginia have dropped the charges against him, his attorney confirmed.
West Virginia officials said Thursday the state “no longer desires to prosecute” 34-year-old Jordan Anthony Doswell.
Doswell was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in June 2019 after being identified as a fugitive from justice, AJC.com previously reported. He was accused of four counts of second-degree sexual assault and one count each of burglary, strangulation and battery in connection with an alleged incident that occurred at the Pullman Plaza Hotel in Huntington, West Virginia, on Sept. 21, 2018.
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Doswell’s attorney, Benjamin Freeman, said the charges against him were dropped because the details his accuser gave police recounting the incident didn’t line up.
“However,” Freeman said, “after reviewing the case against Mr. Doswell we determined that the physical evidence did not match the accuser’s statements to police and to her doctors and therapists.”
Freeman said investigators found online chat records that showed the woman and Doswell had chatted via an online dating app for weeks.
MORE: Toronto special constable wanted on rape charge caught at Atlanta airport
Freeman added the woman refused to answer “basic questions about what happened” during interviews with police.
“Originally, the accuser told police that she had no idea who attacked her,” he said. “Then her story changed. First, this was not consensual sex that went too far; this was not date rape.”
Toronto Community Housing spokesman Bruce Malloch previously said Doswell was employed by the housing agency as a special constable in the community safety unit. Special constables are generally auxiliary officers tasked with security or peacekeeping duties, but they can have the powers of police officers in certain jurisdictions. The current status of his employment is not clear.
Doswell is currently in the Atlanta area, which remains under a shelter-in-place order due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the order is lifted, Doswell will return to Toronto, Freeman said.
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