Suspect in Utah student Mackenzie Lueck's death is charged in a second case
The man suspected of killing University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck was charged Tuesday with the sexual abuse and kidnapping of another woman.
Ayoola A. Ajayi, 31, is accused of sexually assaulting a woman he met on a dating app in March 2018 at his home. Prosecutors say they learned about the crime as a part of an ongoing investigation of Ajayi.
Ajayi was charged with the murder and kidnapping of Lueck, 23, this summer after authorities discovered her body in Logan Canyon outside Salt Lake City.
Lueck disappeared after she returned to Salt Lake City from a trip to her Southern California hometown for the funeral of her grandmother. She texted her parents that she had landed safely and ordered a Lyft to a local park early on June 17.
Her Lyft driver told police that she was meeting someone in a parked car, and police used cellphone GPS location data to put Lueck and Ajayi at Hatch Park within one minute of each other around 3 a.m. June 17.
Lueck’s official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the left side of her head, according to investigators. Police found evidence of her DNA in a burn pit in Ayaji’s backyard while executing a search warrant on his home in the days leading up to his arrest. Her body was found in the canyon 85 miles from Ayaji’s home with her arms bound behind her back.
Police and prosecutors have not said how Ajayi and Lueck were connected or disclosed a motive for the killing, but court documents show that investigators searched social media and dating sites while trying to find a link between Lueck and Ajayi.
The new charging documents show Ajayi met a woman on an unnamed dating app last year. She went to his house and had dinner with him. The sexual abuse occurred after dinner while they were watching television, the documents say.
The investigation into Lueck's death also led officials to charge Ajayi with 19 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor after investigators discovered child pornography on his computer.
He has not yet entered pleas to those charges.
The Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association, which has been assigned to represent Ajayi, said it does not plan to comment on the charges.
Ajayi is an information technology worker who had stints with high-profile companies and was briefly in the Army National Guard.
Lueck was a senior studying pre-nursing and kinesiology at the University of Utah.
Contributing: Associated Press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mackenzie Lueck suspect is charged in second case
