Traveling nurse accused of rape arrested
WINDOW ROCK
Courtesy Gallup Police Department
Dustin Shane Hopper, 31, was arrested last night in Fort Worth, Texas. He is accused by the Gallup Police Department and the Apache County Sheriff’s Department for allegedly sexually assaulting two women in two separate incidents.
Rape suspect Dustin Shane Hopper, 31, who is accused of two rapes in the area, has been arrested.
According to Commander Roscoe Herrera with the Apache County Sheriff’s Department, Hopper was arrested after a two-hour standoff with the Fort Worth Police Department in Fort Worth, Texas, sometime after midnight last night.
“I’m thankful (Dustin) Hopper has been arrested,” said Herrera on Tuesday. “He is off the street.”
Hopper, a “traveling nurse,” as described b Herrera, is accused of raping two women on two separate incidents on Aug. 11 in Gallup and Aug. 21 in Fort Defiance.
Capt. Erin Toadlena-Pablo, with the Gallup Police Department, said the department issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of two counts of criminal sexual penetration in the third degree (force or coercion) and one count of criminal sexual penetration (force or coercion) with a deadly weapon.
For the second incident, Herrera said, they issued a warrant on suspicion of one count of sexual assault, one count of kidnapping and one count of violent sexual assault. The latter, Herrera said, was because Hopper allegedly brandished a firearm during the alleged rape.
Toadlena-Pablo said McKinley County District Attorney Paula Pakkala was working to bring Hopper back to face the crimes he is accused of committing.
Herrera said it did not matter which jurisdiction would be prosecuting Hopper, so long as he was not hurting anyone else.
“We want to express our graduate to the public. We all worked together to get him apprehended,” Toadlena-Pablo said. “Let the justice take its course.”
Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow