A man with a “machete-style knife” on Thursday afternoon forced a 13-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy into a wooded area of a Queens park where the girl was sexually assaulted, the police said.
The schoolmates were walking inside Kissena Park, in Flushing, when a man approached them at around 3 p.m. and demanded that they follow him into the woods, said Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, at a news conference on Friday. When the children balked, the man displayed the knife and told them to “shut up,” Chief Kenny said.
In a secluded area of the nearly 240-acre park, the suspect tied the children’s wrists together using a shoelace before assaulting the girl, Chief Kenny said.
The police described the suspect as a light-skinned man in his 20s with a “heavy Spanish accent,” braces and a tattoo of a red-eyed bull or another horned animal on the left side of his chest. He told the children to stay in place for 20 minutes, then stole their phones and ran, Chief Kenny said.
Law enforcement authorities did not indicate whether either of the children knew the attacker. On Friday morning, officers were canvassing the area for cameras and working to identify the man. The Police Department offered a $10,000 reward for any information.
At the news conference, Jeffrey Maddrey, the chief of department, called the assault “a parent’s nightmare.”
Such attacks by strangers are relatively rare.
About 20 percent of rapes are committed by someone who is a stranger to the victim, according to an analysis by RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. Typically, in cases of sexual violence, the perpetrators know their victims. In about 93 percent of the juvenile sexual assault cases reported to law enforcement, the victims know the perpetrators, according to the network.
There have been 694 rapes reported to the authorities this year in New York City through the beginning of June, an increase from 654 through the same time period last year, according to police data. About 30 percent of the victims were children. And in the 109th Precinct, which includes Kissena Park, there have been 12 rapes reported so far this year, down from 17 during the same period in 2023.
On Friday morning, the park was quiet except for the rumble of police cars idling outside its gates at Colden Street and Juniper Avenue. Students lingered outside the doors of Rachel Carson Intermediate School, a block and a half from where the girl had been assaulted.
As police helicopters and drones flew overhead, Maria Sivira was picking up her daughter, Samara Gonzalez, from the school.
Samara, who is in eighth grade, said she went to the park every day after school but that on Friday her mother had decided to pick her up early and take her home because she was worried for her safety.
“She says it’s dangerous right now,” said Samara, who translated for her Spanish-speaking mother.
Ms. Sivira added that she couldn’t imagine how the parents of the children who were attacked felt.
“She feels scared being a parent,” Samara said.
By the park’s soccer field, Vilma Burke, 81, and her caretaker, Shazia Salam, sat on a bench. Ms. Salam, who doesn’t live in the neighborhood, but has a 14-year-old son, said the park was typically filled with children. It felt different on Friday, she said.
“I feel fear,” she said. “Something is strange over here.”
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