KALAMAZOO, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – It took more than a decade, an extradition from Miami, and a lot of dusting off of old files, but Al Allan De Los Santos Mueses, 40, is finally headed to trial in Kalamazoo.
According to a press release from Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s office, Mueses, a former Western Michigan University exchange student from the Dominican Republic, has been bound over on four counts of First-Degree Criminal Sexual Conduct. The charges stem from a 2010 assault on a fellow student, then 20, whom he allegedly attacked in his apartment after meeting her at a campus rec center.
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On July 1st, charges were filed. By July 11th, Mueses was in cuffs. By August 14th, Judge Kathleen Hemingway of the 8th District Court in Kalamazoo bound him over to stand trial.
The victim had immediately reported the assault and underwent a forensic exam. But back then, nothing happened. No charges. No trial. Just another case filed away – even though the evidence to find the suspect appears to have been in plain sight the whole time.
The “lost and found” department of justice.
Mueses was put in the spotlight after Michigan’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) blew the dust off evidence in the case. The State’s SAKI was established in 2016 to investigate and prosecute sexual assaults related to previously untested sexual assault evidence kits. The SAKI project provides sexual assault victims with the opportunity to have their cases re-investigated in a comprehensive, trauma-informed manner.
After 15 years of the case being unsolved, Nessel praised the “hard work” of SAKI team saying, “I remain grateful to our state’s devoted SAKI units and their efforts to bring about justice for victims of sexual assaults perpetrated years ago.”
From exchange student to extradition.
According to Nessel’s press release, Mueses studied at WMU between 2009 and 2013. He spent the last decade dodging accountability until investigators tracked him down in Miami and he was flown back to Kalamazoo, where the legal welcome committee was waiting.
Authorities hinted that there could be more victims of Mueses and asked for anyone who has information about this incident or similar conduct by Mueses to contact Kalamazoo County SAKI Investigator Richard Johnson. The Kalamazoo SAKI Team is currently in the process of investigating over 200 more cold-case sexual assaults that occurred between 1976 and 2015.
Justice, delayed but not denied.
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Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeffrey Getting called the Mueses case a product of persistence and dedication to justice. Though no pretrial date has been set, the campus nightmare from 2010 is finally on its way to court, with a foreign national now staring down judgment day.
