Police arrested a 23-year-old man on Christmas Eve after authorities connected his DNA to two separate rape cases in North Little Rock that occurred weeks apart, court records said.
Devontai Lamar Peer of North Little Rock is accused of raping two women, one in November and the other in early December, and faces multiple felony charges in connection with the crimes.
In the first case, a woman told police that on Nov. 15 a man threatened her with a "long gun" while she was in bed with her children, then assaulted her in the same room, according to the affidavit.
Weeks later, on Dec. 6, a man forced himself into another woman's home and sexually assaulted her while the victim's children were asleep in another room, the document said.
Police charged Peer with two counts of rape, one count of aggravated residential burglary, one count of aggravated assault and one count of residential burglary, according to an arrest report.
Sgt. Brian Dedrick, spokesman for the North Little Rock Police Department, said there could be additional victims, and he encouraged anyone with information to come forward and report it to police.
Police went to the scene of the first rape when a 24-year-old woman reported she had been sexually assaulted by an unknown man earlier that morning in North Little Rock, according to the affidavit.
The woman told police she felt a tapping on her forehead and woke up to the man holding a "long gun" to her temple, according to an interview with police she gave on Dec. 21.
"He said, 'shh...shh...shh' and covered her head with a blanket," according to the court document.
The victim told police she was in bed with her two children when the man woke her up, the document said.
The man, wearing a black ski mask and a black hoodie, pulled her to the edge of the bed before he turned her away from him, according to the records.
During the assault, the man picked up the gun and told the woman to tell her son "to go back to sleep, and look the other way," according to the report.
The woman said she followed his commands, the document said.
After the assault, the man threatened the woman.
"If I see anything suspicious, or if you call the police, I will come back and it will be much worser than what it is now," the man told the victim, according to the court record.
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The man also took about $250 -- about half her rent money -- that was in the living room, according to the affidavit.
When shown a picture of Peer, the victim said she did not know him but had seen him before walking on the street in front of her house, the document said.
The woman also said she saw Peer while taking her son to a store, according to the affidavit.
The state Crime Laboratory reported on Dec. 20 that DNA recovered from collected evidence matched Peer's DNA profile, according the affidavit.
That same day, according to court records, the Crime Lab also reported that Peer's DNA profile matched DNA evidence recovered in the second sexual assault case, according to police.
On the day of the second assault, North Little Rock police were called to Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, where a 25-year-old woman reported she had been sexually assaulted earlier that morning by an unknown man.
Around 2:30 a.m., the woman told police, she was sleeping in her bed when she heard a knock at the door downstairs, according to an interview she had with police on Dec. 8.
She asked who it was at the door, and a familiar voice responded, "It's me," the document said.
The woman thought it was her boyfriend, but when she cracked the door, she saw a man with a scarf around his face and a hoodie over his head, according to the document.
The man asked for a person, who was unidentified in the affidavit. The woman responded the person was not there, the court document said.
The man forced his way in and pulled out a pink Taser and activated it, the document said.
The woman ran upstairs to protect her two young children, who were sleeping in their room, the affidavit said.
The woman laid "on top of her son begging for the male not to hurt her or her children," according to the affidavit.
The man said he would not hurt the children if she did what he said, according to the document.
The woman was forced into her bedroom and onto the bed before the man sexually assaulted her, according to the affidavit.
"The male had the taser placed to her face," according to the affidavit.
After the assault, the man told the victim that he would kill her and the children if she called the authorities, the affidavit said.
The victim said she recognized the man's voice as that of a person she knew by the nickname "Tay." She said the man also looked like "Tay," who had made a sexual comment to her in the past.
Peer was listed on the Pulaski County jail roster Tuesday evening and was being held without bail, according to the report.
Metro on 12/28/2016