He pistol-whipped a 62-year-old, cops say, then was jailed on rape and kidnapping charges | Miami Herald

A man wanted in a South Miami armed home invasion has been arrested hundreds of miles away after police say he raped, robbed, and kidnapped a woman at knifepoint.

Benjamin Victor Hovan was arrested Thursday at a Titusville convenience store, just north of Cocoa Beach, after a nationwide arrest warrant was issued, Titusville police said.

Brevard County records show Hovan was booked Thursday morning. He was charged with home invasion, sexual battery and kidnapping.

Police say Hovan robbed a 62-year-old woman at gunpoint on Wednesday along the 6000 block of Kendall Drive in South Miami. South Miami police say Hovan, 32, pistol-whipped the woman before taking off with her jewelry and Mercedes Benz.

On Saturday, police say Hovan was in Casselberry, Florida, just north of Kissimmee, where he held a 24-year-old woman at knifepoint.

WFTV9 reported that the woman opened her apartment door thinking it was a pizza deliveryman.

It wasn't.

Hovan, who police say had been watching the woman and her friend load the car in a grocery store parking lot just hours before, barged in with a knife and raped one of them, the news station reported. Afterward, police said, Hovan kidnapped them in a car owned by one of them, took them to a Publix ATM in a nearby town and demanded they withdraw money.

That's when one of the women asked an employee to call 911. By the time police got there, Hovan had fled.

Hovan was spotted at a convenience store in Titusville on Thursday. A police officer thought he was acting suspicious and checked the license plate of the car he was driving.

Hovan was ultimately identified by investigators by his fingerprints in the woman's apartment and in the stolen Mercedes.