Jun 5, 2013 2 min read

A Buffalo Township man was arrested for allegedly raping a prostitute at knifepoint in a parking lot behind a Canton Township convenience store last month.

State police were able to identify Dennis Lee Hopkins, 32, of 116 E. Buffalo Church Road, as the attacker by checking a dashboard camera in a marked cruiser that coincidentally had been behind his car as Hopkins pulled into the parking lot at 880 Henderson Ave., and getting the registration plate.

The 33-year-old woman told Trooper Thomas Schuster that she was working as a prostitute in the area of Walnut Street near Canterbury Court about 1:15 a.m. May 18 when a man driving a green Honda Civic pulled up.

The man, later identified as Hopkins, reportedly told the woman “Let’s get you out of here. … You are too pretty to be doing this.”

As they drove, Hopkins reportedly told the woman he had moved here from Erie and was having problems with his ex-girlfriend. During part of the drive, they were followed by the marked cruiser that continued on after they pulled into the parking lot.

The two had settled on a price for sex, according to the complaint filed with District Judge David Mark, when Hopkins reportedly pulled out a knife with a blade of six to eight inches in length and stuck it in the woman’s side. He allegedly told her that he was going to do whatever he wanted and engaged in a sex act. Hopkins reportedly pulled the woman’s hair and demanded that she look at him. Hopkins then forced her out of the car and drove off. The woman immediately called police.

Schuster said that police were able to get his license plate number from the cruiser’s video.

Hopkins is in the State Correctional Insitution at Pittsburgh on a state parole violation for his conviction on rape and related charges for raping a prostitute in Allegheny County in 2005.