Posted on 12/21/2002 1:12:47 AM PST by kattracks
On a desolate fringe of a Queens park, a gang of homeless men set upon a woman and dragged her into their squalid encampment, raping her for two hours while cops mounted a frantic search.The 42-year-old victim finally was rescued when a police dog picked up her scent, tracked her to the hobo jungle and sank his teeth into one of the men who brutalized her, authorities said.
"It is a horrendous crime," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said as the five assailants were booked on kidnapping, robbery, rape and sodomy charges.
The attack occurred at 10 p.m. Thursday at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, on a deserted pedestrian path linking Shea Stadium and the National Tennis Center.
Sitting on a bench, the woman and a male friend were jumped by a band of what police called homeless Mexican immigrants who beat and robbed them.
The mob then grabbed the woman and pulled her down a flight of stairs leading to a Long Island Rail Road platform, across the tracks and deep into the woods.
Amid the thick brush, the men had put up several shacks patched together from wood, cardboard and plastic - described by one investigator as human "bird's nests."
The huts were filled with old mattresses and piles of garbage. They were so filthy that one cop said he planned to throw out his shoes after stepping inside.
In one of the ramshackle shelters - impossible to see from even a short distance - the men took turns beating and raping the woman.
Her friend had raced off, found a passerby with a cell phone and called police, who quickly swarmed the park.
For two hours, cops searched the sprawling grounds with dogs for a trace of the woman and her captors.
At one point, electricity on the LIRR tracks was shut off so cops could cross over into the thick brush on the other side.
'Dog went nuts'
As police closed in, two of the suspects, Victor Cruz, 22, and Jose Hernandez, 18, ran out of the woods and were captured.
A 10-year-old German shepherd named Sean and his handler, Officer Kim Flechaus, were the first to reach the shack where the victim was held.
"It was awful. We couldn't find her, and then the dog went nuts," one investigator said.
The bloodied woman, naked from the waist down, apparently heard the cops and bolted. She told them one of her attackers was still inside.
The dog was sent in, and he ripped into suspect Louis Carmona, 20, authorities said. After a brief standoff, the dog then pulled Carlos Rodriguez, 22, and Jesus Torres, 28, from a second shanty nearby.
"God bless Sean. He did a hell of a job," a police official said.
Three of the five suspects were treated at the hospital for dog bites.
When they were led out of the 110th Precinct stationhouse last night, they wore only hospital gowns because their clothes were seized for evidence. Shivering, they tried to cover their faces as they walked past.
The viciousness of the assault recalled the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park, which ended with the convictions of five teens being tossed out Thursday. Convicted killer Matias Reyes confessed to the crime.
Another group attack
"This is eerily similar to the whole Central Park thing," an NYPD source said. "Everyone is crossing the T's and dotting the I's to make sure history does not repeat itself."
The gang rape also bore similarities to a group attack on a Brooklyn woman this month in Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights. Those assailants are still at large.
In Flushing, Queens, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority police officer told the Daily News that homeless encampments near the unused LIRR tracks are a persistent problem.
Cops regularly sweep through and knock them down, only to see them rebuilt elsewhere.
Rapes in the 110th Precinct are down 23% this year from last year - and Kelly said it wasn't clear whether more security was needed.
"We're always evaluating that issue," he said.
Prettiness is in the eye of the beholder. Fire can be pretty, when put to good effect.
A Shame but true.
Long life the Revolution and Power to the Little people.
These fat cats should take a history lesson from good old european history. Good times do not last forever and if you keep the little people down long enough, they will come back to haunt you, or hang you !
I don't give a damn. If this forum has become too PC to discuss the very survival of our Free Republic, then we are even closer to the ultimate social explosion.
Ignoring that high pitched whistle and jet of steam escaping the crack in the boiler does not make the problem go away.
There will be no controlling it, and I would not want to live near ethnically mixed areas.
No, Nor me my friend, but as you said previously, the people that run the country don't live near there either, but their companies, that make them the billions, employ the low paid workers from these countries, so they are not going to stop more and more of them coming in, as they will work for even less, improving the fat cats companies profits.
These people at the top need a wake up call and as you can see from other posters, there are like minded people around.
No, Nor me my friend, but as you said previously, the people that run the country don't live near there either, but their companies, that make them the billions, employ the low paid workers from these countries, so they are not going to stop more and more of them coming in, as they will work for even less, improving the fat cats companies profits.
These people at the top need a wake up call and as you can see from other posters, there are like minded people around.
Especially since the same govt that ignores shanties full of criminal invaders will literally go berserk in calling for the heads of anyone who tries to drive a shanty down out of their area.
Calcutta, New York, Mexico City... there is no difference to the power elite in their armored SUVs with armed bodyguards.
If and when the power elite starts getting plinked, they will suddenly notice that there is trouble in "Calcutta USA".
I must have missed that election.
A few more thousand innocent victims and this is going to get volatile beyond belief......Should only take a few more months, maybe a year or two max.
They shouldn’t have called the dog off. The NYPD is strapped for money, and dog food is expensive these days.
Indelicate? I suppose so. I’m plum out of delicate where illegal immigrant thugs bent on raping innocent American women are concerned. Check with me tomorrow. I may have a new supply.
(But I doubt it.)
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