4 arrested in playground gang rape of 18-year-old attacked while with father

Kemberly Richardson Image
Monday, January 11, 2016
4 charged in rape of girl in Brooklyn
Kemberly Richardson has the latest on the arrest of 4 suspects in the rape of a teen in Brownsville.

NEW YORK -- Police are still trying to find the one suspect on the loose after the alleged gang rape of an 18-year-old in Brooklyn.

Four of the five suspects, all between the ages of 14 and 17, were taken into custody in connection with the Thursday night incident at a playground in Brownsville.

"Oh my God, it could have been one of my children, one of my girls," one neighbor said. "And all the little girls running around here, it's just sad, very sad."

The outraged community is speaking out and looking for answers after the horrific incident, in which the victim says five men took turns raping her, and that she screamed for help but no one stopped.

"I was just really scared," the victim said. "I didn't know what to do. I was in a panic mode."

On Saturday evening, police released surveillance video showing the suspects from inside a bodega not far from Osborne Park, where police say the brutal attack unfolded just after 9 p.m.

The suspects have only been identified as a 17-year-old, two 15-year-olds and a 14-year-old. Police were stopping people in the community, filling them in on the gruesome details and getting the word out, and it worked.

On Sunday evening, parents of two of the suspects brought their children into the 73rd Precinct, and police later arrested the other two. Detectives are now talking to all of them at the special victim's unit, with the fifth suspect still out there.

The victim's father says he was with his daughter at the time, drinking near the handball courts, and that the group approached and one pulled out a gun, pointed it at his face and ordered him to leave.

"If I would have stood there and fought them (I would have died)," he said. "Because they meant business. They weren't playing around."

He said he first ran to a bodega, the same store where the suspects had been, for help.

"'I need help, call the cops, my daughter is getting raped,'" he said. "They didn't want to call the cops for me."

The clerk at that bodega tells Eyewitness News that the man was frantic and not making sense.

The father then ran and told police, but by the time officers arrived on the scene 15 minutes later, the suspects were gone.

Charges for the four teens are currently pending.