A man was arrested at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Saturday for the sexual battery of a mentally handicapped woman in 2004.
Boynton Beach police said Pascal Estime was at the airport, aiming to catch a flight to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
Police said Estime, 55, sexually battered the woman, now age 33, on two occasions and impregnated her.
Police say the case against Estime went cold for 12 years as his whereabouts were unknown.
In July 2016, Detective Brent Joseph tracked Estime to Orlando, where the detective obtained a search warrant for the suspect's DNA. However, police said Estime went to Haiti before the warrant could be served.
On June 13, the warrant for Estime's DNA was executed at his home in Orlando.
BBPD says the DNA swab revealed a 99.9997 percent probability of paternity in reference to the compared fetal material.
A warrant was obtained for his arrest for two counts of sexual battery on a mentally defective person.
On July 7, detectives received information that Estime had booked a flight out of Fort Lauderdale to Haiti on JetBlue.
"He knows we were looking at him because we took his DNA for the search warrant," explained Joseph.
Estime was arrested at the airport with assistance from the Broward County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Marshals South Florida Regional Fugitive Task Force.
"He was pretending to sleep," said Joseph. "We were of course in plain clothes trying not to look like cops, trying to be as discreet as possible."
Estime was transported to the Boynton Beach Police Department, where he provided a full confession, according to police.
Joseph, a former special education teacher, vowed to bring closure to the victim's family.
"This is why you become a cop," said Joseph. "It's to protect, bring justice, especially to the most vulnerable of our population."
