The concern of New Yorkers continues to surface in a park in Queens, where a subject raped a 13-year-old girl at knifepoint and is still a fugitive from justice, being the subject of a massive manhunt by the Police Department from New York.
“It sucks because I always come here,” said Queens father Will De Jesus on Sunday in Kissena Park, where the girl was sexually assaulted after the suspect forced her and a friend into a secluded area.
“I bring my daughter, my son,” said De Jesus, 52. “It sucks to hear things like that. Trust me, I have five girls, so I know it sucks. To find out something like that happened to my daughter, wow.”
“I feel like there’s a police presence here, but I never see police here except when it’s a holiday or something,” he said. “There needs to be more surveillance in a space like this.”
Officials swarmed the notorious Flushing park following the daylight rape Thursday afternoon, even offering a $10,000 reward for the location and subsequent capture of the criminal.
Likewise, NYPD bosses called the fugitive an “animal” and announced that they deployed about 60 officers.
On Sunday, two uniformed police officers were guarding the entrance to the 235-acre park, as area residents enjoyed the mild, pleasant Father’s Day weather.
“They’ll probably keep it up until they find the guy, which will be soon,” said one agent, normally assigned to the Bronx. “We have half the detectives in Queens searching.”
He noted that more than 30 officers were canvassing the park looking for the attacker, the New York Post reported.
The subject in question approached the victim and his friend, another minor under 13 years of age, at approximately 3:00 in the afternoon last Thursday and forced them to enter an isolated wooded area with a “machete-style” blade when they They refused to comply, the NYPD said.
He tied her hands with shoelaces and raped the girl, said Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives for the NYPD.
The abuser later stole their cell phones and told them to wait 20 minutes before escaping, Kenny added.
The traumatized minors, who had gone to the park to play soccer, returned to their nearby school after the assault and reported it, the police said.
The suspect is a light-skinned man in his 20s with a strong Spanish accent, has braces on his teeth and a tattoo of a wild boar or a similar animal with red eyes and red horns on the left side of his chest, authorities said.
Although most area residents remain distrustful of Kissena, a couple watched their young daughter riding a bicycle in the park on Sunday until they learned of the horrific sexual abuse.
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