Cops search for pervert who sexually assaulted 13-year-old girl in NYC park: ‘So not safe’
NYPD officers swarmed Queens’ Kissena Park as the department raced to find the monster who sexually assaulted a 13-year-old Asian girl this week in a remote spot in the urban oasis.
Eight police cruisers and a NYPD Mobile Command Center stood by at the park’s Juniper Avenue and Colden Street entrance, as officer working in pairs canvassed the green space on foot and on horseback, and community cops papered the area with wanted posters.
Dad Alankar Ngar, who was in the park with his 14-year-old daughter, said parents were scared.
“Everybody is tense since the news because we all have small children that are playing here, and it happened in the day,” the 48-year-old said. “You can almost understand if it’s a case of the night, but it happened in the day, where we can tell our children to play freely. It’s scary.”
Area resident Anna Zheng, 50, said she was saddened by the attack.
“I feel so bad and so not safe,” said Zheng, 50, who lives in the area. “I’m very shocked.”
The girl and a 13-year-old boy were in a field in the park around 3:30 p.m. Thursday when the man approached and forced them with a “large machete-style knife” into a secluded area, cops said.
He then tied the schoolmates’ wrists together with a shoelace and proceeded to sexually assault the girl. He told them to wait 20 minutes and stole both their phones before fleeing.
The pervert was described as a short, light skinned male in his 20s, with short curly hair and braces on his teeth.
He also has a distinctive boar or a bull tattoo — with red eyes and horns — on the left side of his chest.
The children returned to their school after the heinous incident and alerted staff, who called 911, cops said.
A 30-year-old who gave his name as Steve has lived on the perimeter of the park for six years and said more cops should be there all the time.
“I’m worried about my wife and the children here, there are a lot of kids,” he said.
Queens resident Rehan Safri has lived in the neighborhood for two decades and said he’d never heard of anything like the horrifying incident happening before.
“I’m surprised that this happened – I’ve never seen anything like that or heard about anything like that in the past 35 years, it’s never happened,” the 36-year-old said. “That’s sad, that’s really sad.”
Dad Vikas Rohilla was in the park with his 8-year-old daughter and said there were more parents with their kids in the park than usual.
“This is the park where all the kids from the neighborhood come to play,” the 40-year-old said. “This used to be filled with kids all day but now, you see, the parents are coming with the kids.”
He worried about whether another attack could happen.
“How do we know that this is not going to happen again?” he asked. “If this is going to be what happens, how are our kids going to be safe playing in a playground?”
