A suspect is in custody in connection with three recent attacks on women in Central Park — an 80-year-old who fought the man off, a 38-year-old who told him she was deaf and a 26-year-old he exposed himself to, police sources said.
A joint investigation involving the Special Victims Division and Manhattan Robbery Squad led to the arrest of the man, whose name wasn’t immediately released, in an attack on the 80-year-old Upper West Side woman around noon Friday as she walked in the park.
The victim said she was taking her daily walk near West Drive at 97th Street Transverse when she was suddenly grabbed around the neck from behind.
At first she thought it was somebody she knew but then realized it was an attack, she said earlier this week, asking that her name be withheld to protect her.
“The first thing I thought was someone who knows me and is trying to say hello,” the gray-haired woman said at her home. “Then I realized he was trying to choke me.”
She said the man 1xbet dragged her into the woods and threw her to the ground before grabbing her iPhone from her pocket. The man repeatedly demanded her password, but she began kicking him while “screaming like a mad woman,” she said.
He ran off with the iPhone.
A few minutes before she was attacked the mugger grabbed a 38-year-old by the neck.
The woman told him she was deaf, and showed him the hearing aids she wears in both ears, cops said. He apologized and then fled without taking any of her belongings.
Cops also tied the suspect to a Jan. 19 attack on a 26-year-old woman who was walking in the park at West 109th Street and Central Park West around 3:45 p.m., the sources said. The man grabbed her around the neck from behind and pushed her to the ground while demanding money. When she claimed not to have cash, he fished around in her purse and grabbed her cell phone.
He then pulled down his pants and demanded the woman perform a sex act on him, cops said.
She screamed until two good Samaritans ran over and chased off the suspect. Police released a sketch after the attack.
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