An alleged MS-13 gang member entered an 11-year-old girl’s bedroom in Brooklyn, New York, and raped her, police announced Saturday.
Police said Julio Cesar Ayala, 18, a Salvadorean national who lived in the area, allegedly broke into the girl’s apartment building on Wednesday at 11:30 p.m. by climbing onto the roof and entering through an opening on the second floor before raping her, the New York Post reported.
Officials say he escaped out the window while she screamed for her mother—who rushed to help her.
The mother called the authorities but was not able to get a good view of the attacker. Police, however, were able to obtain images of the suspect through video surveillance footage.
A group of 30 officers from the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit and the 70th Precinct found Ayala on Saturday at 2:35 p.m. hiding at a construction site for a three-story building before taking him into custody.
Police say Ayala had a federal Permanent Resident Card, or “Green Card,” as his only form of identification, and investigators believe he is a part of the MS-13 gang.
The violent gang from El Salvador has been behind many of New York’s most violent crimes. In January, two MS-13 gang members from Queens were arrested for allegedly robbing a New York City cab driver at gunpoint at a Long Island train station.
MS-13 gang members were also allegedly behind the massacre of four Hispanic men in Long Island in 2017, and the murder of two teenage girls in Brentwood in 2016.