FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. — A 64-year-old Mellville, N.Y., man is being held without bond in Flagler County on a sexual battery warrant following a decade-old investigation that was solved through recent forensic DNA and toxicology testing. Kaivan Rahbar waived extradition and was returned to Florida on Wednesday after new lab results confirmed a victim had been drugged during a July 2015 assault.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office reactivated the cold case in July 2025 when the victim contacted deputies requesting her original case file. Detectives reviewed the initial investigation alongside the State Attorney’s Office and submitted evidence for advanced testing.
Deputies with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office originally responded to a local hospital on July 3, 2015, after the victim reported she had been drugged and sexually assaulted by Rahbar. Detectives conducted an initial investigation that included a controlled phone call and a DNA search warrant. Rahbar’s DNA was submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which matched DNA collected during the sexual assault examination.
At the time, testing to prove the victim had been drugged yielded inconclusive results and the case was placed on inactive status after the victim became unreachable. After the case was reactivated in July 2025, detectives submitted the victim’s 2015 blood sample to NMS Labs for additional forensic analysis. In April 2026, NMS Labs confirmed the presence of Zolpidem, a powerful sedative commonly known as Ambien, in the blood sample. The finding confirmed the victim’s account that she had been drugged during the assault. Detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Rahbar on Aug. 3, 2026. Through investigative means, authorities determined Rahbar had relocated to New York and was preparing to leave the country. Due to those circumstances, law enforcement placed him on a no-fly status.
Detectives with the Suffolk County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Command arrested Rahbar in New York on Aug. 4, 2026, on the Flagler County fugitive warrant.
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