A jury in Wisconsin has convicted an Eagan man of raping a college student by knifepoint near a bike path in Madison nearly two decades ago.
DNA from the victim’s sexual assault kit led to the identification of Aidison Yang in 2021, according to last year’s Dane Court Circuit Court criminal complaint charging him with three counts of first-degree sexual assault by use of a dangerous weapon.
Aidison Yang (Courtesy of the Carver County Sheriff’s Office)
Jurors deliberated about three and a half hours last week before finding Yang, 42, guilty of all three counts in the October 2005 attack. Yang’s sentencing date has not been set.
“After all these years we are finally able to hold Aidison Yang accountable for this horrible crime,” Madison Police Detective Kelly Dougherty said in a statement issued by the Wisconsin Department of Justice after the verdict. She said it has been “incredibly inspiring” working with the victim.
After the DNA match, law enforcement discovered that Yang lived in Madison at the time of the attack. In recent years, he lived in Lakeville and on St. Paul’s East Side before moving to Eagan.
According to the complaint, a Madison police detective learned in September 2021 that there was a match in a national law enforcement database that linked the rape suspect’s DNA to Yang.
The complaint does not specify why Yang’s DNA was in the national database, but does mention that in 2020 he was convicted in Hennepin County of criminal vehicular operation-causing substantial bodily harm while under the influence of alcohol. As part of Yang’s sentence, he was ordered to submit a DNA sample, court records show.
He followed her on bike path
The 22-year-old woman, a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student, reported to police on Oct. 15, 2005, that she had been sexually assaulted by a stranger just off a bike path in the Atwood neighborhood on the city’s east side.
After Dougherty learned of the DNA match, she re-interviewed the woman in 2022. She told the detective that she left her home around 8 p.m. to walk to a coffee shop. While on the path, she noticed a man following her. He caught up with her and with a knife in his hand said, “You had better come with me,” she told the detective.
She said he pulled her off the path and over to some trees and said, “Don’t scream or I will kill you.” He put her on the ground and raped her.
She said she kept her hand on his hand that was holding the knife because she was afraid she was going to die. The man ran away with her purse.
She ran home and immediately reported the assault. Police took her to the hospital, where a sexual assault nurse examiner checked for injuries and collected evidentiary swabs from her body.
Yang lived in Madison, then Twin Cities
After the DNA match, Dougherty and other investigators began looking into where Yang was living at the time of the assault.
Dougherty learned that about six months before the attack, Yang, while living in Madison, was charged in Dane County with possession of methamphetamine and carrying a concealed weapon. He pleaded guilty to the weapons charge and was sentenced in November 2005.
An agent with the Wisconsin Department of Justice reviewed Yang’s income tax records, which showed he filed for the years 2006, 2008 and 2009-14, with a Madison address. Yang’s income tax records showed he lived in Lakeville in 2017 and in 2019, and on St. Paul’s East Side in 2018, the complaint said. His first name was also spelled “Addison” in a record.
Yang was arrested in Chanhassen on Feb. 10, 2023, a day after the charges were filed. He was booked into the Carver County jail, pending extradition to Wisconsin, which happened a month later.
In Yang’s Hennepin County case, the complaint said he was driving drunk in Brooklyn Park, ran a stop sign while speeding at 60 mph and crashed into the side of a car. The other driver sustained a broken collarbone and arm.
The complaint also said Yang was convicted of driving while impaired in Wisconsin in October 2010.
Yang has one other conviction in Minnesota, for giving a peace officer a false name after a traffic stop in Edina in 2021.
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