Milwaukee police investigating possible serial gang rape operation through a dating app

Bruce Vielmetti | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Milwaukee man has been charged with aiding, in one instance, what police suspect is a serial gang rape operation that targets women through dating apps.

As many as five or six men were involved, one victim told police, and assaulted her for hours while she was blindfolded and threatened to "blow her head off" if she tried to see their faces.

Davoncia McAfee, 21, was charged this week with forcibly aiding and abetting first-degree sexual assault, and kidnapping, both as a party to the crimes, for a Nov. 11 incident in Milwaukee.

According to the criminal complaint:

A 19-year-old woman came to the District 5 police station on Nov. 13 and said she had met someone named "Kels," who she later identified as McAfee, two days earlier via a dating app called Tagged. They agreed to meet near North 58th Street and West Hampton Avenue, where she got into his silver SUV.

McAfee didn't say much and as they turned north onto North 64th Street, the woman said, another man she had not seen sat up from the backseat, wrapped his arm over her face, pointed a gun at her neck and said, "get back here," before blindfolding her.

After about 15 minutes driving, the woman said, the SUV stopped and the two men led her up some stairs to an apartment living room where she heard several men's voices, some identifying one of the men as "Boss."

Boss ordered everyone to undress and someone else said to get the box of condoms. She said she was ordered to perform sex acts and was continually assaulted by the men over about five hours until Boss drove her back to her car, still blindfolded, while she was in the backseat with McAfee.

Boss told her not to turn around once she was let go or they would kill her.

Instead of calling 911 immediately, the woman did her own online sleuthing, she told police. She posted on Facebook the photo of "Kels" from the Tagged app and asked for help identifying him.

She then found a Facebook page for Von ThaDon Baker that used the same photo and then learned his first name was Davoncia.

Police then helped fully identify McAfee, whom the woman picked out of a photo array as the man she had met at 58th and Hampton.

McAfee at first denied assaulting anyone or even having a Tagged account. But the next day, he confessed that he would set up the dates, pick up the women with a second man hiding in the backseat who would blindfold them before they were taken to an apartment in the 5300 block of North 63rd Street.

McAfee said he was the driver in at least five incidents, but only assaulted one of the women, and that he believed others in the group probably committed similar crimes at other locations without him.

Last week, police searched the North 63rd Street address and found an ID and benefits cards belonging to the woman who reported the Nov. 11 assaults, plus handgun ammunition and a loaded magazine for a handgun.

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