Houston County man pleads guilty in 2010 rape cold case. He’ll serve life sentence
A Centerville man admitted Thursday morning to raping his neighbor in 2010 and will be in prison for life as a result, Houston County District Attorney Eric Edwards announced Thursday.
Dendrick Solomon, 31, pleaded guilty to his rape charge Thursday morning in Houston County Superior Court. Even though the events of the case were from 2010, when he was 17, the case went cold until a lieutenant from the Warner Robins Police Department was told by the Georgia Bureau of Investigations in 2023 that the DNA retrieved from the victim matched with Solomon.
He was indicted in November 2023 on rape, aggravated sodomy and first-degree burglary charges. Since Solomon admitted to his rape charge, his aggravated sodomy and burglary charges were dismissed as a result.
Solomon was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
“This case is a powerful reminder that justice does not have an expiration date,” Edwards said in a statement. “For thirteen years, the victim in this case lived with the trauma of what was done to her, not knowing if her attacker would ever be identified.
Thanks to continuous advancements in forensic science and the perseverance of law enforcement, today she has an answer — and justice has been served.”
‘Justice has been done’
Solomon lived only a few minutes away from the victim, who was 40 years old at the time. She woke up to use the bathroom and noticed someone was in her living room the night of the incident, prosecutors said in a news release. When she called out to him, Solomon told her to shut up and brutally attacked her until she lost consciousness. He raped her, then left her home, according to Edwards.
Officers with the Warner Robins Police Department found her beaten and bloody, Edwards said, with multiple injuries on her face and finger, which he bit.
She was taken to Houston Medical Center to be treated. As part of her treatment, her fingernails were swabbed for potential DNA. The swabs were sent to GBI’s Department of Forensic Sciences.
“At the time, however, law enforcement was unable to develop a suspect and the case went cold,” said Edwards.
Lt. Justin Clark received word from GBI in August 2023 that they discovered that the DNA recovered from the victim potentially belonged to Solomon. The GBI found a match through the Combined DNA Index System, a national DNA database managed by the FBI, Edwards said.
After Clark re-examined the case and obtained the sample of Solomon’s DNA, he sent it over to the GBI, which was able to confirm that the DNA obtained from the victim belonged to him.
“What happened in this case is every woman’s nightmare—a complete stranger breaking into a house and brutally beating and sexually assaulting a woman,” said Justin Duane, the prosecutor in this case. “It’s horrifying. Although it took us a while, I am grateful to be able to say today that justice has been done. Mr. Solomon will spend the rest of his life in prison and the victim in this case now gets the vindication she deserves.
