Suspect in Ex-Senator McSally's Sexual Assault Arrested
A man has been arrested in connection with Wednesday’s assault on former Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona, which happened as she jogged on a trail that winds along the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Local police reported Dominic M. Henton, 25, was arrested around 3:30 a.m. Friday by officers in Omaha, Nebraska, which is just across the river from Council Bluffs.
Henton was arrested on a charge of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, according to the police statement.
The suspect is believed to be a transient “and may frequent the area of the Riverfront on both the Iowa and Nebraska sides,” the news release said.
McSally described the incident on social media shortly after it happened.
“A man came up behind me and he engulfed me in a bear hug, and he molested and fondled me until I fought him off,” she told her followers.
She described turning the tables on her attacker after she broke free of his grasp.
“I then chased him down,” she said. “I said a lot of swear words in this moment. I was in a fight, flight or freeze, and I chose to fight.
“I ran after him. I threw my water bottle at him, and I chased him into the brush, where he was then hiding as I called 911 and waited for the police to come.”
The man ran away, but police used surveillance video and “other investigative means” to identify and locate him, according to the Council Bluffs Police.
Photos released by the police showed a man following McSally before the attack.
McSally, a retired Air Force colonel who was the first woman pilot to fly a combat mission, had traveled to Omaha to speak about courage, NBC News reported.
“And I just had it put to the test,” she said in her Facebook video.
In a follow-up post on Facebook, McSally said she used the experience as an illustration in her speech.
“I didn’t pretend [the assault] didn’t happen,” she wrote. “I shared … authentically and integrated it into my message of living and leading with a brave heart.”
McSally said the incident “tapped into a nerve of other sexual abuse and assault that I’ve been through in the past,” a reference to her 2019 revelation during an Armed Services Committee hearing that she had been raped by a superior officer during her Air Force career, NBC reported.
That prior attack, she said, had left her feeling “powerless.”
After Wednesday’s incident, on the other hand, she said she felt “like I took my power back.”
“He tried to take power from me, but I turned it on him and he was running from me instead of the other way around,” she said.
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