This Article is From Jan 13, 2016

Video Is Said to Show Moments Before a Suspected Gang Rape in Brooklyn

Video Is Said to Show Moments Before a Suspected Gang Rape in Brooklyn

Five days after officials say an 18-year-old woman was set upon in the Brownsville neighborhood, four teenagers were arraigned on first-degree rape charges Tuesday night, and a fifth suspect was arrested.

NEW YORK: A smartphone video that its owner and defense lawyers said showed a brief verbal encounter before a suspected gang rape at a Brooklyn playground emerged Tuesday, another development in an increasingly complex inquiry that has roiled the city.

Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said the Police Department should have notified the public more quickly of the alleged attack, a contention that the mayor had made Monday.

Five days after officials say an 18-year-old woman was set upon in the Brownsville neighborhood, four teenagers were arraigned on first-degree rape charges Tuesday night, and a fifth suspect was arrested.

Detectives, meanwhile, were investigating claims that the woman was having sex with her father when the five suspects encountered them at Osborn Playground around 9 p.m. Thursday.

"That came from two individuals that were arrested," Robert K. Boyce, the Police Department's chief of detectives, said as he stood beside Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio and answered questions about the case at a City Hall news conference. "That's the only place we've got that from so far."

Regardless, the authorities said, it had no bearing on their view of her as a victim. It "does not mean she was not a victim of a pretty horrific attack," a law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation, said. "What appeared to have happened is that the father may have put her in that compromised position."

At a tense arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Tuesday night, the four defendants stood silently as their lawyers criticized the city, saying it overreached in a case that has only grown murkier as more details have emerged. They emphasized that none of the four defendants in court had been picked out in lineups or photo arrays.

"What are we really doing here?" asked Kenneth Montgomery, the lawyer for Denzel Murray, 14. "Have we not learned our lessons from the Central Park Five?"

The defense also questioned the conduct of the woman and her father leading up to the attack, raising a video that it says shows the woman partially clothed on the ground, laughing and smiling, moments before the attack.

"It is compelling," Montgomery said.

Spencer A. Leeds, the lawyer for Onandi Brown, 17, added, "There's a belief in the neighborhood, in the Brownsville community, that the complaining witness and the father have had sexual intercourse."

Shaquell Cooper's bail was set at $50,000, Brown's at $25,000, and Ethan Phillip's and Murray's at $10,000 each.

An assistant district attorney, Lisa Nugent, had requested bail of $500,000 for each of the defendants based on "the very serious nature of these charges."

The police publicly reported the attack - in which the woman and her father said a gun had been used - and released a surveillance video Saturday night.

"There's no denying that the department should have - I, police commissioner, the department, our press office - put some information out on Friday," Bratton said. As "extraordinarily minimal" as the early information was, he added, "that would have been sufficient to alert the neighborhood, the community, and to also, if anybody had seen something, to possibly give us assistance."

The smartphone video that emerged Tuesday was brief and cryptic and showed only the woman, who could only be heard mumbling at times. Whether it might help the defense or the prosecution was unclear.

Billy Sullivan, 24, said the video, less than 30 seconds long, was recorded Thursday at Osborn Playground by his younger brother, Ethan Phillip, 15, one of the five suspects. He said it portrays a fresh snippet of dialogue that would help the argument that any sex was consensual.

"She said yeah," an unidentified male voice is heard saying on the video, played for a reporter Tuesday by Sullivan as he and his mother stood in the doorway of her home. Then a male voice is heard saying: "If you said yeah, it's lit, like, you know what I mean. I could tell you a freak."

Deputy Chief Edward Mullen, a Police Department spokesman, said investigators had not seen the video. But he said they were "aware of claims" that videos of the encounter were made. "We are in the process of obtaining search warrants for some of the suspects' phones," said Mullen, who added that no one from Phillip's family had provided the police with any videos as of late Tuesday.

Asked about the video, Oren Yaniv, a spokesman for the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, said, "All aspects of this case are under investigation, and we will evaluate every piece of evidence."

Two of the suspects, Phillip and Murray, were turned in to the police by their mothers Sunday, one day after the Police Department released surveillance video of a group of young men entering a deli near the playground before the attack. Later Sunday, the police arrested Cooper, 15, and Brown, the authorities said. The fifth suspect, a 17-year-old, was arrested Tuesday morning.

"Both the victim and the father, the witness, say the gun was used, so we're still searching for that gun," Boyce said.

Initially, the police said that "each one of the five suspects raped the victim."

By Monday, the account of that chain of events was changing.

The woman told investigators she was raped by at least one of the suspects and forced to perform oral sex on two others, law enforcement officials said. Under questioning by detectives, two of the suspects told investigators they witnessed those sex acts, but described them as consensual between the woman and the three other suspects, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing case.

The victim and her father have admitted to drinking alcohol at the playground before the encounter, Boyce said. "It's part of the case," he said.

They had bought beer together Thursday, around 9 p.m., the police said, then walked into the playground together, which was captured on "distant video" images, the police said.

Officials said the woman and her father had been separated for much of her life.

He lost custody of her when she was 2, and she was raised "out West" by another family, the officials said, reconnecting with him only last summer.

As for the suspects, one of them, Cooper, had been arrested on attempted murder charges in Brooklyn on Oct. 7, officials said. Those charges were downgraded by a grand jury, however, and Cooper was indicted on assault, fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and other charges, according to court papers.
© 2016, The New York Times News Service
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