Home invasion sex assault suspect arrested

Austin police say a registered sex offender is responsible for a home invasion sex assault. FOX 7 first told you about it last week. Police say he may be connected to another.

Police say Clyde Reed broke into a woman's apartment at the DJ House on Bennett Avenue on April 15th. The victim says Reed got in through an unlocked window. She says he sprayed her with mace, put a shirt over her face and held a knife to her throat. She says he threatened to kill her and sexually assaulted her. He then put her in the closet.

Officers identified Reed through a DNA hit and the Lone Star Fugitive Taskforce arrested him at his home in East Austin on Friday. He is charged with aggravated sex assault with a deadly weapon.

The same type of crime happened to another woman on April 26th at the Salado at Walnut Creek Apartments off 183 and Rutherford Lane. Officers are working to process DNA and print evidence from that crime to see if Reed is responsible for that too.

Reed is a registered sex offender. He is listed as moderate risk level. In 1986, he was convicted of sexual assault of a child. The victim was a 6-year-old female. In 1991 he was convicted of attempted sex assault and sentenced to 270 days in the Travis County Jail. He was arrested for burglary and indecency by exposure in 1996, but was only convicted on the burglary charge. He was sentenced to prison for 17 years for the burglary and was released in 2013.

Lt. Gena Curtis says she believes if not caught, Reed would've continued assaulting women.

"It's probably more of a gut instinct that yes we believe Clyde would've continued with this pattern behavior. So obviously when we saw we potentially had a serial, it's extremely important to work this aggressively. Not that other sexual assaults are not important, but when you have a predator that's just looking to victimize the next individual. We've got to get him off the street and safeguard our community," said Curtis.

Curtis says officers are still processing DNA from the second home invasion. They will also compare Reed's DNA to other unsolved sex assaults.