North Las Vegas police arrest man in 1997 sexual assault

North Las Vegas police made an arrest this week in a rape case more than two decades old, records show.

On Tuesday, Clifton Dawson, 63, was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on a sexual assault charge.

In January 1997, a woman told police she was raped by a knife-wielding man who approached her near a store on the 2400 block of Las Vegas Blvd. North, where she was waiting at a bus stop.

The attack went unsolved until March 2019, when investigators learned that Dawson’s DNA matched swabs from the woman from 1997 as well as a man who said he was sexually assaulted in 2006, according to an arrest warrant.

The man who reported it in 2006, police wrote, died in 2017. But he described a similar exchange with the assailant. The man told police he was approached by a man who fit Dawson’s description. He said the man sexually assaulted him at knife-point near Charleston Boulevard and Maryland Parkway in October 2006.

Police interviewed the woman in the 1997 case again in July 2019. Police said an investigator showed her a 2003 photo of Dawson, and the woman said he was her attacker.

A month later, Dawson was renewing his sex offender registration at Metropolitan Police Department headquarters when North Las Vegas police arrived and spoke with him, the warrant said.

Investigators asked Dawson for an interview and took another DNA swab from him.

Police showed Dawson a photo of the woman. Dawson denied ever seeing her or assaulting her.

Dawson is being held without bail and is due in North Las Vegas Justice Court on Feb. 26.

Contact Dalton LaFerney at dlaferney@reviewjournal.com or at 702-383-0288. Follow @daltonlaferney on Twitter.