A 34-year old man was arrested in hospital in Scotland after fleeing the US to avoid being charged of rape.
According to reports, Nicholas Rossi was wanted by Interpol, to face the rape charges in Utah, US.
He was hospitalized under the name of Arthur Knight when he contracted Covid 19 in December last year and was discovered when he developed complications and was placed on a ventilator at a hospital in Glasgow.
Rossi, a vocal critic of Rhode Island’s child welfare system in recent years, now faces extradition to the U.S. to face a charge of first-degree rape in Utah.
According to court documents, Rossi, who is also known as Nicholas Alahverdian, met a 21 year old woman in 2008 while living in Orem, Utah.
Their relationship ended but Rosssi owed her some money which he promised to pay back but instead of paying her, he assaulted her sexually.
Utah County Attorney David Leavitt’s office said DNA samples collected at the time was only tested in 2017 as part of a state effort to test backlogged rape kits. The Utah evidence was ultimately came back as a match to a sexual assault case in Ohio.
“Investigators also learned that Nicholas Rossi had fled the country to avoid prosecution in Ohio and attempted to lead investigators and state legislators in other states to believe that he was deceased,” Leavitt’s office said in a statement. “Mr. Rossi was discovered to be living under an assumed name in Scotland.”
Rhode Island State Police have also said he is wanted in that state for failing to register as a sex offender, while the FBI have said he is also wanted in his home state of Ohio on charges he took out credit cards in his foster father’s name and amassed more than $200,000 in debts.
In 2020, he told local media outlets he had late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had weeks to live. An obituary published online claimed he died Feb. 29, 2020.
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