Fayetteville police find car that was stolen after sexual assault

Police said Tuesday that they found the stolen car of a woman who reported being sexually assaulted at gunpoint while walking along a Fayetteville road Sunday evening.

The victim, whom investigators said is in her 50s, was walking with her dog along the 2400 block of Murchison Road around 6:30 p.m. when a man carrying a silver handgun approached her, forced her into a nearby field and assaulted her, Chief Harold Medlock said.

The man then took the woman's 1997 black Honda Accord, which had been parked in a nearby parking lot.

Medlock said investigators found the car, stripped of all valuables, on Interstate 95 near Exit 70, just south of Dunn.

Sunday's attack happened shortly after a police officer stopped the woman for an invalid driver's license and told her she could not drive her car home.

Medlock said the officer offered the woman a ride but that she declined, saying she would make other plans. After the officer left, she realized her cellphone was dead and started walking to her home, about a half-mile away.

That is when, she reported, she encountered the man.

Fayetteville police are working on a composite sketch of the man and are asking anyone with information about the crime to contact the police department at 910-257-3668 or call Crime Stoppers at 910-483-8477.