One of three teens charged yesterday in the vicious assault and sodomy of a 16-year-old girl at a Queens high school “wanted to know what it was like to be a rapist,” investigators said.
The 18-year-old suspects – Leon Elkech, Parrish Jones and John Mendoza – were charged with sodomy, kidnapping, sexual abuse and assault in the Tuesday attack at Bayside HS, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced last night.
The three are all 10th-graders at the school.
“She was punched in the face. Her hands were bound,” Brown said of the victim, also a 10th- grader. “She was strangled with a belt and left unconscious. She was sodomized.”
Deputy Chief Patrick Timlin said the girl was found partially clothed with her hands tied behind her back around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday when a student heard her moaning from a boys bathroom.
Cops said she had gone to the basement for a makeup laboratory class, but was late, and found the classroom locked. Then she bumped into the three young men, all of whom she knows, and they all decided to leave together.
But the suspects tricked the youngster, Brown said.
“She thought she was going out through one of the exits,” he said. “They opened the door to lead her out” – but the door led into a boys bathroom.
There, according to an investigator, one of the suspects took off his belt and choked the girl, causing her to drift in and out of consciousness. Jones and Elkech committed sodomy and Mendoza acted as lookout, the investigator said.
“He told us he wanted to know what it was like to be a rapist,” an investigator said of one of the suspects. The investigator did not identify who made the statement.
Brown said the incident was “shocking and reprehensible” – and students yesterday were terrified.
“Some students were crying,” said Renee Words, 16, a senior. “Girls in my class went to the bathroom on the buddy system [because] they were afraid.”
Although Gregory Thomas, executive director of the NYPD Division of Student Safety and Prevention Services, said authorities would reassess the school’s safety plan, “we believe this is an isolated incident,” he insisted.
The families of both Elkech and Jones denied the charges.
“He gets influenced by friends a lot,” said a 16-year-old cousin of Elkech. “Whatever they tell him to do, he does. I don’t think he’d do anything like that.”
Jones’ mother, who did not give her name, said, “It’s not in the nature of my son to do anything like that.”
Mendoza’s family refused to comment.
But the owner of the AKC Puppies pet store, where Mendoza has worked on and off, described the teen as “very withdrawn.”
The arrests came the same day cops announced the arrest of a 13-year-old boy charged with the sodomy of a 13-year-old girl in an empty class at Halsey Middle School in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
That attack occurred Oct. 21 – but wasn’t reported to police until Tuesday, cops said – raising questions as to when school officials became aware of the incident, and what they did about it.