Connecticut prosecutors will try to send a black man suspected in rape cases along the East Coast to face trial first in Virginia, where a prosecutor asked for him to be extradited to answer for heinous crimes

African-American Aaron Thomas was arrested in March 2011 in his hometown of New Haven, and authorities say DNA confirmed that he is responsible for rapes and other attacks on 17 women from Virginia to Connecticut over the span of a decade. New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington wouldn't discuss why Connecticut had decided to extradite Thomas, who is planning to challenge the move to another jurisdiction. Prince William County prosecutor Paul Ebert said that he petitioned to have Thomas returned to Virginia, where he faces potential life sentences, as soon as possible. The first assault that authorities say they connected to Thomas was in 1997 in Forestville, Md., when a man pulled a gun on a woman and forced her into the woods, then fled on a bicycle. Seven months later, a woman was raped behind a restaurant garbage bin in Maryland. The following year, a 16-year-old girl was raped, also in Maryland. Authorities said that the same man then started attacking women in Virginia, until two victims were raped in the same attack in Maryland in 2001. Police said that the suspect resurfaced in 2006 in New England, peeping on a girl doing her homework in Rhode Island before her screams scared him off. Two teenage trick-or-treaters were raped in 2009 in Woodbridge, Va. Authorities had mounted a large-scale public outreach campaign, putting up electronic billboards in the states where the attacks occurred and in neighboring states. DNA from a cigarette that police saw Thomas discard after leaving a New Haven court was used to confirm that Thomas was the man wanted in the attacks, a prosecutor has said.