‘That nurse should be alive’: How police delays left a suspect at large

On the night of June 18, 2018, a hospital in New York City summoned the police to meet a woman who said she had been raped.

When a detective from the Special Victims Division showed up, the 23-year-old woman gave him a picture of a man whom she had met on the dating app Tinder and an alias he had used. She described how he had choked her unconscious and sexually attacked her the night before in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The detective worked on her case overnight as she underwent a medical exam. She also went with him that night to point out the place where the rape had occurred.

But instead of prompting a vigorous investigation, the victim’s report was largely set aside for three weeks as the detective juggled other cases, The New York Times has learned. By the time the suspect, Danueal Drayton, was arrested a month after the attack, police and prosecutors said he had killed a nurse in Queens and raped another woman after fleeing to Los Angeles.