A woman who narrowly escaped death after an encounter with suspected Tinder serial killer accused of killing seven people described him as ‘a cool guy’.
Zynea Barney, 26, met Danueal Drayton on the dating app ‘Plenty of Fish’ in November 2017 and soon struck up a rapport with the suspected murderer.
Barney said she and Drayton talked about his love of cars and he seemed interested in her work with the disabled.
‘There weren’t any issues. Nothing awkward,’ she told the New York Daily News,’He was a cool guy.’
Danuel Drayton, 27, of New Haven, Connecticut, was arrested in Los Angeles on July 24, for allegedly strangling 29-year-old Samantha Stewart in New York City on July 17
The couple ended up dating for six months, but their relationship turned sour as he slashed her tires and tried to strangle her in a park near her home in Inwood, New York.
According to Barney, on the day of the strangling she and Drayton met up for lunch and he told her he was moving to California.
After he told her to drive to a park and Barney told him there was no chance of them getting back together Drayton allegedly lunged at her and started to strangle her.
‘He was choking me, saying “F—king b—h, I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you, I’m going to kill you. No, no. I told you, it’s just me and you.”‘
Barney said she was only saved when three passing factory workers noticed the struggle and rushed over to help.
The police were called but for reasons that remain unclear Drayton was not arrested.
He then proceeded to verbally abuse Barney online, slashed her tires and threatened to kill her young son.
Police say that Drayton uses dating apps like Tinder to target and stalk his potential victim
Police finally arrested Drayton for assaulting Barney on June 30, and charged him with strangulation and criminal trespass. He was ordered held on $2,000 bail.
But on July 5, Nassau County officials let him go.
He was later arrested in Los Angeles on July 24, for allegedly strangling 29-year-old Samantha Stewart to death at her Queens home on July 17.
Authorities tracked down Drayton in Los Angeles, where they found him in the same residence as a woman who had been tied up and was said to be held against her will.
‘It would have been impossible for the judge at that time to foresee the allegations that are presently unfolding,’ a spokesperson for the Nassau court told ABC 7.
‘This monster gets out and has the nerve to fly to L.A. to commit another crime, to destroy another family,’ the victim’s father Kenneth Stewart raged.
On his arrest, law enforcement sources say Drayton not only confessed to murdering Stewart but also boasted about killing six other women. He claims to have killed two in Connecticut, slain women in the Bronx and Suffolk County, as well as another murder in Queens or Nassau County.
Stewart (left and right) was found in a pool of blood, with all her teeth had been knocked out and her tongue hanging out
Authorities believe that Drayton met Stewart on dating app Tinder and said during a press conference that he may have used dating sites to meet other women and victimize them
‘My body did this, not my mind,’ Drayton allegedly told police. ‘I didn’t want to do this. My body made me do this.’
Police are now investigating the claims and NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea is convinced that ‘there will be more victims.’
He said that Drayton used dating apps like Tinder to target and stalk his potential victims.
‘It is believed by us that this individual uses dating websites to meet women, and then victimizes these women,’ Shea told reporters at a news conference last week.
Police say that between 2011 and February 2018, Drayton was arrested five times in his home state of Connecticut – including on a second-degree strangulation charge.
He is currently on probation in that state for second-degree harassment.
Drayton was arrested last week after the victim’s father found the grisly murder scene when he went to check on his daughter after she missed her night shift.
He found his daughter’s body, wrapped in a sheet and in a pool of blood, in the second floor bedroom of her home in the Springfield Gardens neighborhood of Queens.
All her teeth had been knocked out and her tongue was hanging out when she was discovered. The cause of death was trauma to the head and neck, police say.
Kenneth Stewart branded Drayton a ‘monster’ for allegedly killing his daughter
‘I turned her over trying to shake her and say ‘Samantha,’ Kenneth told ABC 7. ‘No response. I realized when I turned her over, she was dead.’
Stewart called his daughter’s killer ‘a monster’ and ‘pure evil.’
Police connected Drayton to the slaying via Tinder.
They were also able to connect him to the June 17 rape of a 23-year-old woman in Brooklyn using facial recognition technology. The rape victim says she also met Drayton through Tinder.
Cops tracked Drayton’s white Ford to John F. Kennedy International Airport and found the suspect had flown to Los Angeles on a one-way ticket. When he landed, he jumped straight back on Tinder, police say.
He was arrested Tuesday and charged with attempted murder, rape, false imprisonment by violence and sexual penetration by a foreign object.
He has not yet made his first court appearance because he is reportedly refusing to leave his cell.
Drayton is currently being held on $1.25million bail in Los Angeles, and has a NYPD hold as well, according to jail records.
Drayton was arrested last week after Kenneth found the grisly murder scene when he went to check on his daughter at her home in the Springfield Gardens neighborhood of Queens (pictured)