NYC parkgoers on edge as creep who molested 13-year-old remains on loose
Tensions remain high at a Queens park where a creep sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl – and remains on the loose, the subject of a massive NYPD manhunt.
“It sucks because I always come here,” Queens dad Will De Jesus said Sunday at Kissena Park, where the teenager was molested after she and a pal were forced into a secluded area by the suspect.
“I bring my daughter, my son,” said De Jesus, 52. “It sucks to hear things like that. Trust me, I got five girls so I know it sucks. To find out something happened to my daughter like that – woof.”
His daughter-in-law, Jas Webb, called the incident “unsettling.”
“I feel as if there’s a police presence here but I don’t ever see cops here except when it’s a holiday or something like that,” she said. “There needs to be more vigilance present within a space like this.”
Cops blanketed the popular Flushing park following the Thursday afternoon, broad-daylight assault, and even offered a $10,000 reward for the creep’s capture.
NYPD brass called the fugitive an “animal’ and said some 60 cops were deployed.
On Sunday, two uniformed cops guarded the entrance to the 235-acre park as locals enjoyed the mild and pleasant Father’s Day weather.
“They’ll probably keep it up until they find the guy, which will be soon,” one cop – normally assigned to the Bronx – told The Post. “We have half the detectives in Queens looking.”
He said more than 30 police officers were blanketing the park looking for the attacker.
The suspect approached the victim and her friend, a 13-year-old boy, around 3 p.m. Thursday and forced them into a secluded wooded area with a “machete-style” blade when they resisted, police said.
He tied their hands with shoelaces and molested the girl, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
The sicko then stole their cellphones and told them to wait 20 minutes after he fled, Kenny added.
The traumatized youngsters, who had gone to the park to play soccer, returned to their nearby school after the assault and reported it, cops said.
The suspect is a light-skinned man in his 20s with a heavy Spanish accent, has braces on his teeth and a tattoo of a boar or a similar animal with red eyes and red horns on the left side of his chest, cops said.
While most locals remain wary at Kissena, one couple who watched their 4-year-old ride her bike at the park on Sunday were shocked to hear of the horrific assault.
“We just walked by and I said, ‘Why are there so many cops here?'” said Lem Kieu, 42. “It doesn’t make sense. Now that you tell me, it does. Shouldn’t they let us know?
“There’s this playground. There’s another playground over there,” he said. “We come here to let our kid loose, so to speak. Now knowing that, we would second-guess letting her go further [down the path].
“This is life. This is New York City and things like that happen, unfortunately.”
