By Kathianne Boniello
A Flushing man accused by authorities in 1999 of acting as a lookout in a basement bathroom of Bayside High School while two of his friends allegedly attacked and sexually abused a female student pleaded guilty last Thursday in a Kew Gardens courtroom.
He was sentenced to six years in jail for his role in the rape.
The guilty plea by Jonathan Mendoza, 20, came just hours after the Queens district attorney’s office unsealed new charges against a second suspect in the attack, who is accused of trying to hire a hitman from jail earlier this year to kidnap or kill his victim “if necessary.”
Through his lawyer, Parrish Jones, 20, of East Elmhurst, pleaded not guilty last week before Queens Criminal Court Judge Joseph Grosso to a 14-count indictment accusing him of plotting to have his victim kidnapped or killed to prevent her from testifying against him at his upcoming trial. A third suspect, Elkech Leon of Queens Village, pleaded guilty in February and was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
Both young men, who were teenagers at the time of the Bayside High School attack, stood quietly side by side in front of Grosso last Thursday morning as the court proceedings began. A neatly dressed, fresh-faced Jones spent most of the time staring at the floor while his lawyer, Richard Johnson, argued that the DA’s office had concocted the new charges against his client because of weaknesses in its case against him.
Mendoza, whose thick, wavy hair was neatly pushed back, entered the courtroom wearing eyeglasses pieced together with masking tape. His lawyer, Sandra Perez, said they had been broken after other prisoners beat her client in jail.
Perez claimed the high-profile case has resulted in regular abuse for Mendoza while in jail, including one incident in which other prisoners tried to set his hair on fire.
The brutal sexual attack that Mendoza, Jones and Leon were accused of rocked the peaceful atmosphere of Bayside High School, which sits in the center of Bayside, one of the city’s safest communities.
Authorities contend the three men lured a girl, a 16-year-old sophomore at the school, into one of the basement bathrooms before Jones and Leon allegedly began beating her and choking her with Leon’s belt. The pair are accused of taking turns sodomizing and sexually abusing the girl while Mendoza acted as a lookout, authorities said.
While Leon, who said during his arraignment in 1999 that he participated in the attack because he wanted to know “what if felt like to be a rapist,” pleaded guilty in February, Jones continues to fight the charges against him and is awaiting trial.
Meanwhile, Mendoza is expected to serve six years in an upstate prison after pleading guilty to the crime last week. Perez, who said her client was a special education student with the mentality of a 12-year-old, said Mendoza had not attacked the girl but was too afraid of Jones and Leon to interfere.
“It’s almost like he was a ghost,” she said. “He was scared to death at everything he saw.”
Hours before Mendoza entered his guilty plea in court, Jones was facing the new attempted kidnapping and murder charges brought against him.
Between February and June, the indictment said, Jones allegedly contacted an undercover agent who he thought was a hitman with the help of another prisoner.
Jones gave the undercover agent written descriptions of his victim in the Bayside High School attack, the indictment said, including her name and where she could be found so she could be kidnapped to keep the girl from testifying against him in court.
According to the indictment, Jones included a suggestion to “kill her if you have to,” planting drugs on the body to make it seem as if the girl had been killed during an illegal drug transaction, the court papers said.
Richard Johnson, Jones’ lawyer, said his client denies all the charges against him.
Reach reporter Kathianne Boniello by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
