Man charged in 2015 rape of woman who walked in south Mpls. neighborhood

A 20-year-old man imprisoned for robbery and suspected in a sexual assault in St. Paul has been charged with an ambush rape on a street in a Minneapolis neighborhood east of Lake of the Isles.

Mika Dalbec, of Minneapolis, was charged in Hennepin County District Court last week with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in an August 2015 attack on a 26-year-old woman in the Lowry Hill East neighborhood.

Dalbec has been imprisoned since August 2016 for two robbery convictions in Ramsey County and has two cases pending in the same county for allegedly following and attacking a teenager and woman.

In a complaint from last year alleging sexual assault, prosecutors wrote that Dalbec "is known to police as a suspect in several robberies and criminal sexual conduct cases in the St. Paul area" that occurred the first three months of 2016.

A message was left Wednesday with an attorney for Dalbec seeking comment.

According to charges:

Police were called to the 2500 block of Aldrich Avenue S. about a sexual assault in progress and saw a woman crying and pulling up her pants.

A nearby resident told police he awoke to cries for help, ran outside and saw the woman on the ground and a man standing nearby, who then walked away.

Police said the woman was with friends at a restaurant downtown that night and chose to walk home.

She said her attacker grabbed her by the neck and pulled her between two houses. He choked her until she passed out and took her driver's license and keys.

More than 14 months later, a St. Paul man contacted the woman on Facebook and said he found her license and keys while cleaning out a room he had let to Dalbec, who was in prison by this time.

In prison, Dalbec denied a connection to the rape and robbery but his DNA sample was a match with DNA taken during the woman's exam.

Dalbec admitted following the woman and robbing her but denied any sexual assault.

The sex assault count was dismissed, and he pleaded guilty to robbery.

Six days earlier, also in St. Paul, Dalbec confronted a 16-year-old girl near W. 7th Street. He allegedly put his arms around her, lifted her and grabbed her buttocks.

The girl got on a bus with friends, and Dalbec boarded as well. Video from the bus led police to Dalbec. A pretrial hearing is pending in that case.