The suspect in the violent assault of a woman in Kew Gardens Hills last month isn’t leaving jail any time soon.
Ronald Williams, 21, was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court and ordered held without bail on May 10 for allegedly attacking and critically injuring a 52-year-old woman at a stairwell on April 30. Following an extensive search and investigation, law enforcement agents located Williams — who, Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said, is homeless — at a South Carolina hotel on May 8.
Williams faces first-degree charges of assault, sexual abuse and unlawful imprisonment, and faces up to 25 years behind bars if convicted.
Police said the attack occurred sometime before 8:30 a.m. on the morning of April 30 in the vicinity of Kissena Boulevard and 72nd Road. Brown stated that Williams had “waited for just the right moment” at the location and “pounced” on the woman, who had just dropped off her son at a nearby school.
“The defendant brutally attacked a Queens mother so viciously that she was unrecognizable when she was found unconscious at the bottom of a building’s stairwell,” Brown said on May 10. “No one should have to worry about fending off a sexual attack on the streets of our county at any time of the day or night. Despite the defendant’s efforts to escape justice, he was fortunately apprehended and will now stand accountable for this horrific crime.”
Officers from the 107th Precinct responded to the location with EMS units after receiving a 911 call regarding what was described as a possible sexual assault. Paramedics rushed the woman to a local hospital, where she continues to undergo treatment of a fractured vertebrae in her neck and a fractured orbital bone. She also required four staples in her head to close a wound caused by blunt force trauma, prosecutors said.
As the investigation unfolded, detectives obtained and released security camera footage of the person of interest riding a Q44 bus on April 30, about an hour before the assault occurred.
The Q44, a Select Bus Service line running between Queens and the Bronx, makes a stop at the corner of Main Street and 72nd Avenue — about three blocks west of the crime scene.
In the days that followed, police put a name to the face and identified the person of interest as Williams; he had been arrested in January 2017 for assaulting a woman in the Bronx. Following additional leads obtained during the investigation, members of the NYPD Queens Special Victims Squad, the NYPD Fugitive Task Force and the U.S. Marshals located Williams at a motel in Columbia, SC and took him into custody.
This is a developing story; check with QNS later for further details as they become available.
