cops hunt creep

[Leon.Anus]

Posted: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 1:48 pm | Updated: 2:24 pm, Wed Jun 20, 2012.

By Denise Romano and Heather J. Chin | 0 comments

Police from the 72nd Precinct arrested Anjum Yaque, a 38-year-old New Jersey man, for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman in his livery cab on Sunday, June 17.

According to the police report, the woman was at a party in Manhattan on Saturday, June 16 and hailed what she thought was a taxi on Lexington Avenue between East 31st and East 32nd Streets at about 5:48 p.m. She told the driver, whom she described as an Indian or Middle Eastern man in his thirties, that she was going to lower Manhattan.

The victim fell asleep in the backseat of the SUV, due to drinks she had consumed at the party. When she woke up, Yaque was reportedly sitting next to her, allegedly trying to feel her genital area through her clothes. She reportedly fought him off and after a struggle, fled the vehicle at Third Avenue and 63rd Street and walked down to Second Avenue, in Sunset Park.

A passing motorist called 9-1-1 and waited with her until the police arrived. Officers searched her for evidence and the victim realized her phone was missing.

Using the “Find my iPhone” application, police found that the SUV was traveling back to Manhattan. Officers from the 72nd Precinct put a call out on the radio, alerting the 5th Precinct to stop the vehicle if it crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge.

The phone was eventually recovered in a car matching the SUV’s description, parked in a parking lot in Woodbridge, New Jersey, the town where Yaque resides.

Yaque was charged with unlawful imprisonment, sexual contact, criminal possession of stolen property and forcible touching.

His arrest is the fourth in as many weeks, all for sexual assaults on young women in Sunset Park. Another man was arrested shortly after an 11 a.m. groping of a woman on Thursday, May 24, on 53rd Street between Second and Third Avenues; another man was arrested two days later for allegedly grabbing a woman at 8:30 a.m. near a Rite Aid on 52nd Street at Fifth Avenue; a third man was arrested for allegedly groping a woman at 48th Street and Fifth Avenue at around 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 10, shortly after the Puerto Rican Day Parade.

A fifth man is still wanted for allegedly assaulting a female acquaintance inside a building on 54th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Also at large is a Hispanic male, around 5’4”, in his 30s or early 40s, last seen wearing a Yankees cap, who was released by officers who responded to a May 23 call of a groping on 16th Street between Fourth and Fifth Avenues.

The two officers from the 72nd Precinct who let that man go have since been reassigned to precincts in the Bronx and Staten Island, placed on desk duty, and relieved of their guns for 18 months, according to Captain James Grant.

Another man was arrested for the May 31 assault on a 15-year-old girl at the Fort Hamilton Parkway “N” train station in Boro Park.

These incidents are the latest in a long series of sexual assaults in Sunset Park, Greenwood Heights and Park Slope that began in March, 2011, and which has resulted in some arrests, but as many continued searches, and heightened anxiety in the communities.