UCSB police officers traveled Wednesday to the Hayward Hall of Justice to arrest Daniel Jiang Chen, a 21-year-old former UCSB student from San Ramon, for involvement in the brutal, high-profile gang rape on campus in 2014. Chen appeared in Alameda County court at 9:00 a.m. for an unrelated felony marijuana charge from a January incident.
According to UCSB police Sgt. Rob Romero, law enforcement officers were able to link Chen’s DNA sample — he provided a swab when booked for the felony drug arrest — to that found at the scene of the gang rape through a match in the FBI’s Combined Index System, better known as CODIS. Romero declined to release further details, citing an active investigation.
On February 23, 2014, a 19-year-old UCSB female student was attacked and raped for hours by an estimated three men in a dark area covered in overgrown foliage on the edge of campus. The victim suffered a broken nose, blunt trauma to her knees, among other injuries, and contracted genital herpes. She managed to escape, run home, and call the police. She then took a rape kit. The victim, whose identity is undisclosed by authorities, filed a personal-injury lawsuit against the university last month.