COLUMBUS  — Attorney General Mike DeWine says Ohio’s crime lab has processed nearly 5,000 previously untested rape kits as it searches for DNA matches that could help solve reported sexual assaults.

DeWine says forensic scientists with the state lab had received 4,956 previously untested kits from 110 law enforcement agencies in Ohio as of early this week.

Testing has been completed on more than 2,300 of those rape kits, leading to 766 DNA matches in a criminal database.

DeWine announced the testing initiative in December 2011. The attorney general has offered free DNA testing to any law enforcement agency with untested rape kits in which a crime was believed to have been committed. Many of the kits submitted for testing are between 10 and 20 years old.

First Published December 7, 2013, 2:27 p.m.