Man held in 2006 Santa Barbara attack
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A convicted sex offender has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder more than a year after he allegedly slipped through an open balcony door at a Santa Barbara waterfront hotel and attacked a couple as they lay sleeping, police said Wednesday.
Tomas Obispo Morales, 23, was picked up in nearby Goleta after DNA tests identified him as the couple’s assailant, said Santa Barbara Police spokesman Sgt. Lorenzo Duarte.
Convicted of a sex crime he committed about a month after the attack, Morales was required to give a blood sample for identification purposes. The DNA extracted from it was linked to blood found at the scene, police said.
The vacationers at the Santa Barbara Inn, a married couple in their 50s, have not been publicly identified.
Morales allegedly entered their second-floor room about 4 a.m. Dec. 23, 2006, stifled the woman’s screams with his hand and fought with her husband, stabbing him several times with a broken bottle in the abdomen and around his face.
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