Man accused of sexual assault in Five Points arrested, Columbia police say
The man accused of breaking into a home in Five Points and sexually assaulting a woman was arrested Tuesday.
At about 6 p.m., Robert Drayton was taken into custody by multiple law enforcement agencies, the Columbia Police Department said.
The 39-year-old Columbia resident was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct, first-degree assault and battery, kidnapping, and first-degree burglary, jail records show.
The University of South Carolina police said that on April 28, Drayton broke into a woman’s home in the 2000 block of Greene Street in the middle of the night and sexually assaulted her. That’s an area with businesses and apartments about a mile from USC’s Horseshoe.
In addition to Columbia police officers, Richland County sheriff’s deputies and U.S. Marshals were involved in the arrest.
No bond has been set on the charges, and Drayton is being held at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, jail records show.
Drayton has an extensive criminal record and is a registered sex offender, online records showed.
He was convicted of a sex crime in 2003, according to the South Carolina sex offender registry. He is listed as living in an apartment in the 2000 block of Greene Street.
In 2006, he pleaded guilty to armed robbery, court records show. Two years later, he pleaded guilty to not registering as a sex offender. The next year, he pleaded guilty to stealing a credit card and petit larceny, according to records.
In 2014, he pleaded guilty to domestic violence, burglary, property damage and shoplifting, according to court records. The next year, he again pleaded guilty to domestic violence. In 2017 and 2020, he pleaded guilty to assault and battery.
For the 2020 assault plea, a judge sentenced Drayton to more than three years in prison after he served about a year and a half in county jail, records show. How Drayton was released by 2021 isn’t clear from online public records.
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