Nearly a year after he was arrested at an Atlanta airport and charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count each of battery, burglary, and strangulation all resulting from an alleged incident that occurred one year prior to his arrest, Toronto special constable Jordan Anthony Doswell is freed.
The man was being prosecuted by West Virginia officials, who last Thursday dropped the charges against the 34-year-old Canadian, saying the state “no longer desires to prosecute” him, reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Doswell’s attorney, Benjamin Freeman, told the outlet that the charges were dropped because the accuser’s story, which changed repeatedly, didn’t line up with the evidence.
“After reviewing the case against Mr. Doswell we determined that the physical evidence did not match the accuser’s statements to police and to her doctors and therapists,” Freeman said.
Freeman explained to the AJC that the woman changed her accusation while speaking with police.
“Originally, the accuser told police that she had no idea who attacked her,” he said. “Then her story changed. First, this was not consensual sex that went too far; this was not date rape.”
She also, Freeman said, refused to answer “basic questions about what happened” while speaking with police.
The AJC previously reported the woman claimed a man she didn’t know broke into her home and raped her.
Freeman added that in the end, police found online chat records between the accuser (who has not been named because even though she appears to have lied, media outlets give her anonymity simply for claiming to be a victim and she has not been arrested yet) and Doswell that proved they had been speaking for weeks on an online dating app.
Doswell is originally from Toronto, but the woman he met was in West Virginia, where their encounter took place. The AJC explained Doswell’s job as a special constable:
Toronto Community Housing spokesman Bruce Malloch previously said Doswell was employed by the housing agency as a special constable in the community safety unit. Special constables are generally auxiliary officers tasked with security or peacekeeping duties, but they can have the powers of police officers in certain jurisdictions. The current status of his employment is not clear.
Doswell had been arrested at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta in June 2019 after being labeled a fugitive from justice due to the incident in West Virginia. He was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Now Doswell is trapped in Atlanta due to a coronavirus shelter-in-place order, and can’t return to Toronto until that order is lifted.
It is so far unclear whether the woman will be charged with filing a false police report. While she enjoys anonymity for claiming to be a victim, Doswell’s name was plastered across news reports as an alleged rapist, and based on the woman’s claim and the way articles were written, he seemed guilty. The Daily Wire is using his name so that people who search for him will learn the charges were dropped because the accuser’s story didn’t add up.