DNA evidence leads to conviction in 2013 sexual assault of MSU student

LANSING TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WILX) - A man was found guilty Friday in a 2013 sexual assault of a Michigan State University student.

According to the Lansing Township Police Department, a student from Chicago went to a bar to celebrate her graduation with friends and she left with a man she met that night. Police said he drove to a dark parking lot in Lansing Township, told the woman he was a police officer and raped her.

The student was able to escape the vehicle, but left her purse behind.

Police said the student contacted her roommate, who was not in town, and said she was afraid to call 911 because she believed he was a police officer and that he may hear the call and return to her location. Her roommate called 911 for her.

Police transported her to Sparrow Hospital, where a nurse conducted an examination and DNA evidence was recovered.

The DNA was entered into the Combined DNA Index System and the case sat dormant for six years.

Police said in September 2019, a 14-year-old girl told her family that a man raped her in August 2012, when she was 7 years old in Clinton County.

Authorities said the man was known to the family and a suspect was identified as Marcelin Nikubwayo. A DNA sample was taken from Nikubwayo and police said it matched the prior sample.

During the next three years, Lansing Township Police Det. Randy Volosky, the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office, the Michigan State University Center for Survivors and a member of the Special Victims Unit with the Chicago Police Department worked together on the investigation, which resulted in a 2021 arrest warrant charging Nikubwayo with third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Police said at the time, he was already being held in the Ingham County Jail for an assault committed in Lansing.

A preliminary examination was held in 55th District Court, in which testimony from the student and other witnesses were heard. Police said the charge against Nikubwayo was amended to first-degree criminal sexual conduct after the examination.

Nikubwayo was found guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct Friday.

He is expected to be sentenced by Judge Rosemarie Aquilina on Aug. 28. He faces the possibility of life in prison.

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