Just after midnight last Thursday, South King County Fire and Rescue EMTs opened the shirt of a car accident victim to perform CPR and saw a tattoo on the man's chest reading "New York City's Gentle Giant".

The night before, those same EMTs learned from a local TV news report that a rapist was on the loose after attacking a female hotel clerk in Federal Way, said Federal Way Police spokeswoman Stacey Flores. In a police interview, the hotel clerk had described her attacker as possessing the same, unusual tattoo on the upper right hand side of his chest.

When EMTs compared the hotel clerk's thorough descriptions of the rapist - what he was wearing; how he was bald, heavy-set, with a small goatee and light-colored eyes - they suspected the driver of the crashed car and the rapist were one and the same.

The South King County Fire and Rescue EMTs called the Federal Way Police Department, who assumed investigation of the case and dispatched a police guard of the man at the hospital.

The 36-year-old suspect is in serious condition at Harborside Medical Center with back and neck injuries after driving a 1990 Geo Prism into the rear end of a semi-truck parked on the northbound I-5 off-ramp of the South 348th and Enchanted Parkway South. The semi-truck driver was not injured.

The police think alcohol may have been a factor in the crash, according to a department statement released the next day.

Less than 24 hours prior to the car crash, the night front desk clerk at the Extended Stay America hotel on South 320th in Federal Way called 911 to report that she had just been raped at knifepoint. She described how her attacker had first approached the front desk and asked her for a list of vacant rooms. He then quickly moved behind the desk, hit and grabbed her and forced her into a nearby vacant room, said Flores, and after the sexual attack, disappeared.

"The victim was released from the hospital the next day," Flores told the Federal Way News last Thursday. "While she's not exactly O.K., she was able to be released."

The female hotel clerk had worked at the Extended Stay America hotel for five years and was the only staff member on duty at the time.

The hotel manager, Jesse Messinger, said she was unable to speak about the incident until the hotel's chain's corporate office in South Carolina permitted her to do so.

After taking the clerk's statement, FWPD used a K-9 unit from Kent to pursue the attacker but were unable to track him. They had no solid leads in the case until the crash occurred.

The man was not immediately arrested, as police moved to conduct DNA testing to positively identify him as the rapist before making an arrest.