The Kern County Grand Jury indicted a man on 21 felony counts in connection with the east Bakersfield serial rapist case, District Attorney Lisa Green announced Tuesday.
Billy Ray Johnson Jr., 33, was arraigned on the charges Tuesday morning. He had been in custody since October 14 on an unrelated weapons charge. Johnson fired a gun while driving and was pulled over and arrested, Sheriff Donny Youngblood said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
Johnson was under suspicion of the rapes even before the arrest, BPD Police Chief Greg Williamson said. But law enforcement waited for a DNA match through a national database before charging Johnson with the sexual assaults.
The indictment includes 6 felony counts of forcible sexual assault, including one count involving a minor.
The attacks happened July 1, July 18, August 1 and August 19, Green said.
The series of summer attacks struck fear across the city.
In one case, detectives said Johnson broke into an apartment in the 2900 block of Virginia Avenue, near Oswell Street early in the morning, tied up four people and sexually assaulted two of them.
That attack in mid August was similar to another violent attack weeks earlier about four miles away at an apartment on Columbus Street. In that case, a woman was bound and raped shortly after her husband left for work early in the morning.
At the time authorities also said they believed Johnson may have been involved in two separate burglaries in March and May, in the same apartment complex on Virginia Avenue.
Billy Ray Johnson Jr., 33, was arraigned on the charges Tuesday morning. He had been in custody since October 14 on an unrelated weapons charge. Johnson fired a gun while driving and was pulled over and arrested, Sheriff Donny Youngblood said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
Johnson was under suspicion of the rapes even before the arrest, BPD Police Chief Greg Williamson said. But law enforcement waited for a DNA match through a national database before charging Johnson with the sexual assaults.
The indictment includes 6 felony counts of forcible sexual assault, including one count involving a minor.
The attacks happened July 1, July 18, August 1 and August 19, Green said.
The series of summer attacks struck fear across the city.
In one case, detectives said Johnson broke into an apartment in the 2900 block of Virginia Avenue, near Oswell Street early in the morning, tied up four people and sexually assaulted two of them.
That attack in mid August was similar to another violent attack weeks earlier about four miles away at an apartment on Columbus Street. In that case, a woman was bound and raped shortly after her husband left for work early in the morning.
At the time authorities also said they believed Johnson may have been involved in two separate burglaries in March and May, in the same apartment complex on Virginia Avenue.