The story of the Brooklyn father who ran as five men allegedly gang raped his daughter in a city park is taking increasingly bizarre turns.
Only a day ago it was revealed that the father was so drunk that, after he ran away, he couldn’t explain to passersby why he wanted to call the police. And then police became suspicious that the father was having sex with his own daughter before the five attackers showed up and also that she may have agreed to have sex with some of the others until, perhaps, it all got out of hand.
The first twist concerned the father’s state of inebriation. Witnesses came forward to report that the man was so drunk that the people he staggered up to for help wouldn’t lend him their cell phones because they couldn’t understand what he was saying.
The alleged attack occurred last Thursday when the man and his 18-year-old daughter were walking through the Osborn Playground near Hegeman Avenue in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.
According to the father, five young thugs approached them and displayed a weapon then told him to “get the **** out of here.”
The victim’s father told police he then ran off seeking a cell phone to call for help. But apparently, he had trouble getting people to understand him.
According to the New York Post, a worker in Zaida Deli and Grocery said, “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,” the witness continued, “or ‘I need to call the police’ or of course I would’ve given it to him or just called the police for him.”
“I could just tell [he was wasted] by the way he was acting,” said another witness, a worker at Brownsville Plaza.
Surveillance video also shows the 39-year-old dad stumbling around in a confused manner before he finally spots a police cruiser and flags them down.
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton confirmed that the girl was raped. “At this juncture, we have no doubt she was raped,” the commissioner said.
Initially four teenagers were arrested and charged with the attack.
Denzel Murray, 14, Shaquell Cooper, 15, Ethan Phillip, 15, and Onandi Brown, 17, were each charged with rape, forcible compulsion, criminal sex act, and sex abuse, the NYPD reported.
All are being charged as adults.
Two of the teens have since claimed that the sex with the girl was consensual. A third is claiming he left the park before the attack, and the fourth has yet to make a statement.
By Tuesday evening, the fifth suspect had been apprehended. According the the NYPD, the fifth suspect, identified as 17-year-old Travis Beckford, was arrested at about 11am at Tilden High School where he is a student.
But police have also found some more disturbing aspects about this odd case. Some evidence is leading the NYPD to believe that the girl and her father were having sexual intercourse in the darkened park before the five suspects arrested for her rape even showed up.
The late evidence seems to show that the girl and her father were already having sex in the park. According to investigators, the father had lost touch with her when she was three-years-old and only recently reconnected. The girl’s mother is also out of her life, apparently.
But there’s more—police were also given cell phone video, showing the teen girl naked from the waist down and smiling while sitting with one of the suspects.
On the video provided by suspect Ethan Phillip’s brother, a voice is heard saying, “You saying yeah?” and then the smiling girl says “it’s lit,” apparently meaning that the green light is on for them to have sex.
With these additional facts, lawyers for the suspects say that the case is “about to disappear” because there is enough doubt on the claim of rape that prosecution should prove difficult.
But police still say that medical evidence proves that the girl was abused, and she appeared traumatized when discovered by officers that night.
For police, what remains unclear is just when the sex went from consensual—if it ever was—to forced.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.