A rapist broke into a Queens woman’s apartment and held a knife to her toddler’s neck – demanding that she submit to his desires or see the child’s throat slit, the tearful victim told a jury yesterday.
“I just tried to defend myself,” said the 35-year- old victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post.
“But with one hand he covered my mouth and with the other hand he took out a knife, and he put the knife on my daughter’s throat, telling me that if I don’t cooperate, he’s going to kill my daughter.”
The horrifying attack took place July 23, 1994, inside the woman’s second-floor, two-bedroom apartment on Woodbine Street in Ridgewood.
But the accused man, Hector Torres, 35, remained at large until DNA lifted from the victim’s bedsheets was matched to a sample taken from Torres after his arrest on an unrelated burglary charge.
The victim, then working as a home health-care aide, testified that she’d gone to sleep in her 2-year-old daughter’s room, cuddling up with the child at around 11 p.m. while her husband was working late.
She said she woke when she heard a prowler enter through a kitchen window and creep through the apartment.
“I was thinking, ‘What can I do?’ ” she said. “I wanted to take my daughter and run away . . . I didn’t move in the bed. I didn’t want to make any noise.”
But then the intruder spotted her in the child’s room and began touching her genitals. When the woman tried to resist, he took a knife out of his bag.
Faced with the nightmare choice, the victim stayed quiet while he raped her.
“It was disgusting,” she said.
On the stand, the woman admitted that she couldn’t identify Torres herself.
“He covered me from head to toe with a sheet,” she said. “And he told me, ‘Don’t call the police, because I know you and I know your daughter and I’m going to kill you if you do that.’ ”
Defense attorney James Koenig declined to comment on the case.