WARREN, Pa. (AP) — A man who served four years in a Maine prison for a violent sex assault has been arrested in Canada on charges that he accosted a couple at gunpoint in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest., tied up the man and raped the woman.
Mike Beaulieu, 35, of Anson, Maine, was arrested near Lac Baker in New Brunswick, Canada, on Tuesday by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Pennsylvania State Police in Warren said.
State police had filed a criminal complaint Monday charging him with several crimes including rape, aggravated assault, unlawful restraint and carrying an unlicensed firearm in alleged attack Aug. 3.
Beaulieu allegedly approached the couple as they were eating at the forest’s Kinzua Point Information Center, tied up the man, forced the woman into his pickup truck and drove her to the Red Bridge area of McKean County, where he raped her at gunpoint.
Beaulieu told the alleged victim that he was planning to commit suicide but that he wanted to “rape someone before I die.”
The woman flagged down a passing state trooper along Route 321 and reported the attack.
Beaulieu’s extradition status was not immediately clear Wednesday, nor whether he has an attorney.
The Maine Sex Offender Registry said Beaulieu was convicted of gross sexual assault in 2005 and served four years of a 10-year prison sentence before the rest of his sentence was suspended. In Maine, gross sexual assault is forcing someone to commit a sexual act.
He was released from prison in July 2009 and registered for life as a sex offender in Maine.
Police charged Beaulieu after the couple identified him from a photo lineup along with some witnesses who saw him near the forest in northwestern Pennsylvania the day before the rape. Those witnesses told police that Beaulieu had asked about area campgrounds, and that they directed him to an area near where the attack eventually occurred.
Police traced his pickup truck to Fort Kent, Maine, where they believe the suspect crossed the river into Canada.
Margaret Philbin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, told The Associated Press that office may be asked to take over the prosecution, since the attack occurred on federal forest land. If that happens, the state charges would likely be dismissed and a federal grand jury indictment would be sought.
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