Ft. Bragg Soldier to Be Returned to Face Rape Charges

Military police at Fort Benning are holding Spc. Menkaura Moss on warrants from Spring Lake police.

Posted 5:35 p.m. Mar 12, 2007 — Updated 3:55 a.m. Mar 13, 2007

SPRING LAKE, N.C. — Police expect military police to bring them a soldier this week who is charged with attacking three women and raping two of them in the apartment complex where he and they lived in Spring Lake.

Military police at Fort Benning, Ga., arrested Spc. Menkaura Moss, 21, of Virginia Beach, Va., on warrants that Spring Lake police issued last week.

Spring Lake detectives accused Moss of two counts each of second-degree rape and second-degree sex offense, three counts each of first-degree burglary and felony larceny, four counts of credit card fraud and one count of attempted second-degree rape, according to Police Chief A.C. Brown.

Police said Moss lived with his wife at the Southwinds Apartment Homes at Duncan and McKenzie roads. The mechanic with the 108th Military Police Co. had been sent to Fort Benning for training. It was not immediately known when he would be returned.

The first report came Dec. 31, when a woman told Spring Lake police that a man broke into her apartment and slapped, choked and raped her.

Detectives said the second attack happened Jan. 28 and involved a woman sleeping next to her toddler daughter. She told them she was choked and raped by a man in a mask.

The third report came Feb. 15. The woman, sleeping next to her infant girl, told officers that an intruder choked and assaulted her.

In each case, police said, the woman reported that she put up a fight and her attacker ran off.

Purses were taken in the December and January attacks, police said. In the February incident, the attacker took the woman’s debit card and used it four times, which is what led them to Moss. The purses from the first two attacks were found in trash bins.

The attacks all happened at night in ground-floor apartments, police said.

"I go to work early—4 in the morning—and he could have gotten me. Why not let us know?" asked Chisa Bonilla, who lives near the apartments and said she had heard nothing about the attacks.

Jessica Neff lives in the apartments and says managers recently warned residents there of the rape reports.

"They actually gave us a slip saying, 'Make sure your doors are locked when you leave and that your windows are locked,' and they actually put extra locks on our windows, and they made sure screens were in and everything," Neff said.

Moss’s unit, the 108th MP Co., is assigned to the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg and has participated in several overseas operations, including Desert Storm and Desert Shield and Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S. anti-terrorist effort in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It was not known whether Moss had been assigned to those missions.

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