Photo Courtesy of Homefacts
Rashon Venable is a registered sex offender in Albrightsville, PA.
By Forum Staff
A 24-year-old Pennsylvania man has waived extradition and will be arraigned on charges of stabbing to death a young girl in her Cambria Heights home in November 2008. The defendant was identified when a recent DNA sample he provided in Pennsylvania was matched to the one in CODIS, a national DNA database created and maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and which contains DNA profiles from, among other sources, crime scenes.
“DNA is an important law enforcement tool that protects the innocent and punishes the guilty. In this case, the defendant is accused of a brutal act of violence in which he spent many years eluding identification and remaining free only to ultimately have his own DNA point the finger at him,” said District Attorney Brown. The DA noted that his office would work tirelessly to see justice served in this case no matter how long it took.
The defendant is identified as Rashon Venable, 24, of Mecksville Road in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania. Venable was brought in for arraignment to Queens Criminal Court in Kew Gardens on a charge of second-degree murder. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years to life in prison. District Attorney Brown said that, according to the criminal charges, on Sunday, November 9, 2008, Livingston Matthews discovered the body of his daughter, 14-year-old Sabrina Matthews, inside her bedroom. The girl had a deep slash wound to her neck and a laceration to her right arm. There was allegedly no sign of forced entry to the residence.
Recently, the New York City Police Department was notified that there was a CODIS match in Pennsylvania of Rashon Venable and the biological evidence that was recovered from the Cambria Heights crime scene. At the time of the murder, Venable was sixteen years old and living in Queens Village, approximately two miles from the crime scene.
