By Betsy Scheinbart
A Brooklyn man was arrested Friday and charged in two June sex attacks in Laurelton, including an assault against a 15-year-old girl as her mother and a tot were forced to watch, police said.
Ricardo Rapley, 27, of 3318 Avenue J in Brooklyn was apprehended Friday and charged with sodomy in the first degree in a June 27 attack against a 15-year-old girl, said Carmen Melendez, a police spokeswoman. Rapley was also charged in another sexual assault that occurred June 7, she said.
Both attacks occurred in the 105th Precinct, which covers Laurelton, Springfield Gardens, Rosedale, Cambria Heights, Queens Village, Bellerose, Floral Park, Glen Oaks, New Hyde Park and North Shore Towers.
In the June 27 incident, which occurred off Rockaway Boulevard near John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 3 a.m., a man approached a 15-year-old girl, 39-year-old woman and a 3-year-old boy, displayed a firearm and sodomized the 15-year-old, police said at the time.
The exact location of the attack was not released due to the nature of the assault, police said. At the time, the attacker’s age was estimated to be 40, but Rapley is 27.
The perpetrator took $250 in cash from the 39-year-old woman and fled the area after the attack. The 15-year-old girl was taken to Jamaica Hospital for evaluation, police said.
According to Newsday, in the June 7 attack a 23-year-old woman who was walking with her 2-year-old child when a man forced them into a parking lot on Rockaway Boulevard and sodomized the woman.
Only two months earlier on April 28 in the vicinity of JFK, two women were carjacked by an armed man at 4:30 a.m. in Jamaica Center, forced to strip naked and left at the airport early in the morning, police said. Detectives were still searching for the attacker.
The victims in that attack, who were 32 and 34, described the gunman as a black man, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, average weight, and about 30 years old, police said.
Although the women were not sexually assaulted, they had been forced to strip naked by the time the gunman was startled by a UPS truck and fled the scene, police said.
The gunman took off with the women’s maroon 2000 Ford Explorer, their jewelry, cash and credit cards, leaving the naked victims behind, police said. The car was recovered two days later, but the perpetrator remains at large, a detective at the 103rd Precinct said Tuesday.
Reach reporter Betsy Scheinbart by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300 Ext. 138.
