Three male postal workers were charged with kidnapping a female co-worker whom they dragged into the back of a mail truck after a party at a Manhattan post office in 2023, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
One of the men was charged with attempted rape in the attack.
Police officers found the woman, who has not been publicly identified, and her attackers in the truck after they responded to a 911 call in June 2023, according to a statement from the office of Alvin L. Bragg Jr., the Manhattan district attorney.
Prosecutors said she had become incapacitated at the party and was “physically helpless” at the time of the attack.
“As alleged in this indictment, these three postal workers dragged their incapacitated colleague out of a post office and into a mail truck, where one attempted to rape her,” Mr. Bragg said in the statement. “We take investigations and prosecutions of sexual violence extremely seriously.”
The postal workers, Daniel Jean, 38, Kirt Acala, 38, and Edward Chou, 40, were all charged with a range of crimes, including kidnapping and kidnapping as a sexually motivated felony. Mr. Jean was additionally charged with attempted rape and forcible touching. All three men pleaded not guilty.
Their lawyers did not respond to messages seeking comment on Wednesday. Representatives for the U.S. Postal Service also did not respond to a request for comment.
Prosecutors said the attack took place on June 8, 2023, when the woman attended a birthday party for a co-worker after the end of the work day at the post office branch where she worked at East 11th Street and Fourth Avenue in Manhattan.
During the party, the woman had a few drinks with a group of co-workers, including the defendants, and soon began to feel strange, prosecutors said. She then blacked out and woke up several hours later in an ambulance, telling investigators she had no memory of how she got there.
Prosecutors relied on video surveillance footage, as well as a 911 call from a passerby and a cellphone video taken by another eyewitness, to describe the events of that evening.
In a news release describing what happened, prosecutors said that footage from surveillance cameras inside the post office showed Mr. Jean and Mr. Chou holding the woman up between them. She was visibly incapacitated, with her head lolling back and forth around her shoulders. Mr. Jean is also shown in the video groping her, prosecutors said.
The video later shows the three men dragging her through the post office’s loading bay and into the back of a mail truck parked on the street.
She was unable to walk or hold her head up, but she can be seen in the video struggling to resist them, prosecutors said. She repeatedly grasped the railing of the loading bay ramp to keep them from dragging her any farther, and the men can be seen in the video prying open her hands to carry her away.
Court documents said one passing witness took a cellphone video that showed the woman lying unconscious on the street and then being carried into the back of the truck by the three defendants. Another passerby called 911 to say they had seen a group of postal workers assaulting another postal worker on the street and had heard cries for help.
When officers responded to the 911 call, prosecutors said, they found Mr. Alcala and Mr. Chou sitting in the front of the mail truck. They refused to step outside the vehicle or to open the back of the truck, and told officers there was no one back there.
But the officers could hear banging and screams for help coming from the back of the truck, prosecutors said. Mr. Jean then emerged from the back with his pants unzipped, and when officers went inside they found the woman with her pants also undone.
She told the officers she did not know where she was but said she was scared, prosecutors said.
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