Victim said she thought he had a knife; suspect released on $5,000 bond

A Minneapolis man is being charged with criminal sexual conduct after being accused of raping a woman on a bus passing through Crookston Friday. Mohamed Harir Ayanle, 22, was released from the Northwest Regional Correction Center Monday on a $5,000 bond and on the condition that he does not leave Minnesota.

According to the court complaint, the Crookston Police Department were dispatched to 2200 University Avenue - the location of the Crookston Inn & Convention Center - on a report of criminal sexual conduct on a Jefferson Lines bus traveling from Minneapolis to Grand Forks. The victim told dispatch that another passenger on the bus threatened her and made her have sex with him. She said that Ayanle said he “had something,” which she believed to be a knife though she never saw a knife, and that was the reason she went with him.

The victim said Ayanle first approached her when she was sitting with her daughter and invited her to come watch a movie with him in the back of the bus when her daughter fell asleep shortly after a stop in Bemidji. Once she went to the back of the bus, the victim said Ayanle forcibly removed her clothes and raped her.

Ayanle told authorities that the pair had consensual intercourse and denied threatening the victim.

A sexual assault evidence kit was collected at RiverView Health and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office is assisting in the continued investigation.