A Walk in the Park: Central Park Rape Suspect Apprehended By Police

Update: Central Park rape suspect David Albert Mitchell - 42, a parolee from Virginia - is escorted from the PSA 5 Pct on E. 124th Street which houses the Manhattan North Special Victims squad this evening at 5:25pm. He will be brought to Manhattan Criminal Court where he will be arraigned.

(Photo: Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates.) Click on image to enlarge.

He spit and cursed at the media as he was walked to an unmarked police car. Two of the uniformed rookie officers who arrested Mitchell walked behind him as he was escorted to the car.

Mitchell was charged with first-degree rape, committing a predatory sex act, committing a criminal sex act, robbery, assault and criminal possession of stolen property.

Mitchell has a lengthy arrested record including for murder, sexual assault, possession of a firman, and robbery in Virgina. He did eight years for a 2003 kidnapping.

He was just 18 when he was charged with molesting and beating to death 87-year-old Annie Parks during a burglary in his hometown of Jenkinjones near the border of Kentucky and Virginia.

Police say he was known in Central Park as "Keith" and also the "Animated Man."

"I won’t let anything keep me from enjoying the park. It's my park. " said the Central Park rape victim.

Manhattan

By Geoffrey Croft

Hours after a 73-year-old bird watcher was brutally raped, mugged and beaten in Central Park yesterday, police apprehended the suspected who they believe is the assailant, NYC Park Advocates has learned.

Surveillance-camera still of the Central Park rape suspect.

N.Y.P.D. surveillance-camera images of the suspect that three rookie uniform cops used to find the suspect.

Another photo of the Central Park rape suspect.

Police picked up a 42-year-old male described by law enforcement sources as homeless last night at 7:20pm on Amsterdam Avenue and 77th Street.

He has an out-of state police record and was also wanted for questioning for a August 20th incident in Central Park where he allegedly pulled a knife on a park patron.

He is expected to be walked out of PSA 5 Pct on E. 124th Street Between 2nd/3rd Ave. momentarily.

This was the third reported rape on parkland in a little over a week including one on Monday.

On Wednesday Mitchell walked past three rookie uniformed officers around 7:20 p.m. on 77th Street and Amsterdam Avenue a few blocks from Central Park's Strawberry Fields where the rape occurred. The officers - Enmanuel A. Rodriguez and Steven F. Ourelio, both 26, and Sicelin Ortiz, 23, - recognized the suspect from the surveillance video that was circulated by the NYPD within hours of the incident.

The officers arrested Mitchell and he was later identified by the victim in a lineup.

According to police the career criminal allegedly confronted the woman because she had taken pictures of him masturbating in the Ramble a week and a half before the vicious assault.

“Do you remember me?” the victim said Mitchell asked her before attacking her.

Mitchell threw the woman to the ground, punched her repeatedly in the face and other parts of her body, raped her and stole her bag, police said.

“He pounced on me. He jumped on my back . . . I started screaming. And he said, ‘You don’t scream!’ And he grabbed my throat.

“I still screamed. ‘He said, ‘I’ll cut your jugular!’ I stopped screaming.”

Then “he raped me — vaginally and rectally. Brutally,” she said.

Afterward, he repeated, “I’ll cut your jugular. He mashed my head into the dirt. He said, ‘You stay there and count to 100.’

"I counted to 100.”

On Thursday afternoon the victim - who suffered two black eyes, bruises and a broken finger in the brutal attack - told a reporters that she wants her attacker “dead."

The brave woman said, “I’m not scared. I don’t want to lose that pleasure. I won’t let anything keep me from enjoying the park.”

“I’m not going back looking like this, but of course I’ll go back. It’s my park. “I look like hell, but it will heal. I can see I’m alive,” she said.

Police recovered the picture of him of the previous encounter from her computer's hard drive. At least of the victim's memory cards were found on him at the time of the arrest.