Suspect (NYPD)
Sept. 12, 2012 By Christian Murray
The Woodside woman who was attacked by a sexual predator on 39th Avenue and 61 Street managed to survive the ordeal through some quick thinking.
The woman, who didn’t want her name released, said she was walking back to her apartment from a lounge bar on Roosevelt Avenue in the early hours on Saturday, August 25, when her attacker pounced on her.
“He came out of nowhere and he started hitting me, brutally,” the 34-year-old said. “He hit me several times, primarily in my face; he was angry,” she said. The assailant, described as a 20-25 year-old Hispanic between 5’5 and 5’9, fractured her nose and gave her a black eye. “He was trying to knock me out so he could rape me.”
The victim, who was trying to fight back, spoke to the perpetrator in Spanish and asked him what it would take for him to stop. “He said ‘suck my XXXX’, he said ‘suck my XXXX’, twice.”
At that point, the victim told the attacker that they should go to a dark section of the block where they couldn’t be seen. “He started moving over there…and I took off,” she said.
The victim, who is 5 ‘2 and 140 pounds, said that she was fortunate that she was reasonably athletic and was able to withstand his punches.
The woman was taken to Elmhurst hospital and remained there most of Saturday.
She provided the police with a vivid description of the perpetrator but did not hear back from them for days. She then went down to the police station and was assigned a detective from the Special Victims Crime Unit.
“The police showed me videos of a guy they have been looking for,” she said. The videos were of a Hispanic man, she said, who has attacked several women in Sunnyside and Woodside. The incidents took place late last year, and involved a man on black mountain bike.
“I’m almost 90% sure that it is the same guy.” Like in those cases, the woman said the man who attacked her was on a black bike.
She said that she is much more alert of her surroundings since the incident and wouldn’t walk home late at night by herself. Despite that, she insists that everyone has a right to walk down the street. Nevertheless, “They got to get this guy off the street,” she said.
UPDATE
Photo: QueensPost
Public officials held a press conference on Thursday, Sept. 13, at 61st and Roosevelt Ave., to express their outrage over the incident and to ask the public for tips.
The public should call the police at 718-520-9277 for tips.
