Two other suspects are being held in jail until they go to trial.
OLD ORCHARD BEACH (AP) – A sexual assault charge has been dismissed against one of three suspects charged in the rape of a 14-year-old Gorham girl in an Old Orchard Beach motel last year.
A DNA test failed to match Kingsley Nwaturocha’s DNA with that found on the victim, said Patrick Gordon, a York County assistant district attorney. Nwaturocha was released from the Cumberland County Jail on Tuesday.
“I don’t believe I’d be able to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Gordon said. “I don’t have the forensic evidence that I feel I need.”
The two other suspects are being held in jail until they go to trial.
Dan Eneagu, 38, of Albuquerque, N.M., and Okey Chukwurah, 58, of Frisco, Texas, have pleaded innocent to a charge of gross sexual assault.
The girl, who is said to have the mental capacity of a younger child, was dropped off in Old Orchard Beach after she disappeared from a South Portland shopping center.
Authorities say she encountered a group of men in a parking lot and was brought to Chukwurah’s motel room, where the assault allegedly took place.
Nwaturocha, 43, a native of Nigeria, had been living most recently in Baltimore.
His attorney, Clifford Strike of Portland, said Nwaturocha was working as an electrician on the Portland waterfront and was in Canada on vacation when he learned in February that he was wanted in the United States on a criminal charge.
“He could have hopped a plane to Nigeria rather than come back, but he didn’t,” Strike said Tuesday.
Nwaturocha was arrested Feb. 9 as he crossed into New York from Canada aboard an Amtrak train. U.S. border agents did a routine criminal background check and found he was wanted in Maine.
Strike said Tuesday that Nwaturocha later volunteered hair and blood samples for the DNA test, which proved negative.
“The only one more pleased than me is my client,” Strike said.
Nwaturocha was initially held in the York County Jail in Alfred, but was transferred to Cumberland County Jail in Portland in April after he said he was beaten by jail personnel.
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