Crime & Safety

More Disturbing Details Emerge in Brooklyn Gang-Rape

Five teen boys have been arrested and charged for the alleged, brutal rape of a young woman at a Brooklyn playground.

UPDATE, Jan. 14, 5:30 p.m.: Brooklyn Gang-Rape Suspects to Be Freed From Jail

BROWNSVILLE, BROOKLYN — An 18-year-old woman allegedly drinking alcohol at Brownsville’s Osborn Playground with her father around 9:10 p.m. last Friday, Jan. 8, initially claimed she was raped by five teen boys at gunpoint as her father drunkenly tried — and failed — to get help.

However, the boys’ defense attorneys are now calling that narrative a total farce.

The attorneys claim that when the boys came across the father and daughter at Osborn Playground that night, the two were already having sex — and that when the boys cut in, the young woman was “laughing and smiling.” They also claim there’s video to prove it.

The NYPD’s initial investigation determined that one of the teens pointed a gun at the victim’s father and told him to leave the area.

“The father complied and each one of the five suspects raped the victim,” the department said in statement issued Sunday. By the time her father had located an NYPD patrol vehicle and directed two officers back to the playground, her rapists had fled, police said.


New York Post and New York Daily News interviews with employees at two nearby bodegas — Zaida Deli and Brownsville Plaza Deli — revealed the victim’s father may have seriously botched her rescue.

The employees said the man was too drunk to express himself clearly.

A worker at Zaida Deli told the Post: “He was swaying side to side. He asked me, ‘Lend me your phone.’ I said, ’No.’ ... He didn’t tell me it was an emergency or ‘I need to call the police,’ or of course I would’ve given it to him or just called the police for him.”

From the Post:

Police said they have video that shows the girl and her dad buying 22-ounce cans of beer at a bodega and entering the park before the attack at the Osborn Playground in Brownsville around 9 p.m.

The victim told cops that she and her 39-year-old dad — whom she only recently reconnected with after being adopted — were drinking near the handball courts “to be away from the police,” sources said.

Five teens have been arrested and charged for the gang-rape.

Police named the suspects as Denzel Murray, 14, Shaquell Cooper, 15, Ethan Phillip, 15, Onandi Brown, 17, and Travis Beckford, 17.

All five teens are facing the same set of three charges: 1) rape, 2) two counts of a criminal sex act and 3) sex abuse. They will be tried as adults.

Two of the boys surrendered at the 73rd Precinct building, police said, while the other three were apprehended by cops. (The two that surrendered were brought into the precinct by their mothers, according to the New York Daily News.)

A couple of the boys — and their lawyers — have reportedly been claiming the sex was consensual. However, police sources told the Post that the victim ”has cuts and bruises consistent with being physically attacked.”

Said NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton: ”At this juncture, we have no doubt she was raped.”

According to the Post, the same two boys claim that when they came across the father and daughter Friday night, they were already having sex. “Can we have some of that?” one boy reportedly claims he asked the dad.

In the days following the Osborn Playground attack, Brooklyn politicians and activists questioned the NYPD’s response to the Friday-night attack, as well as the time that passed — around two days — before the media caught wind of such a brutal act committed in the middle of a public park.

“I am calling on the NYPD to conduct a full investigation not only to identify all those responsible for this horrific attack, but also to determine if everything possible was done to protect the victim and the public,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said in a statement released Sunday.


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