People terrified after New York woman is sexually assaulted at knifepoint by man while jogging in park
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: A woman was sexually assaulted at knifepoint on Saturday, September 24, while jogging at Fort Tryon Park in Inwood, the New York Police Department confirmed. The unnamed woman was attacked at 11:14 am near Dyckman Street and the Henry Hudson Parkway. She was rushed to Harlem Hospital in stable condition, police said, adding that the suspect was wearing a dark colored hooded sweatshirt and that he may have fled on a dark-colored moped. Investigators have been searching through the area around the path to look for clues related to the assault.
Parkgoers were left shaken after news of the assault surfaced. “It’s making me pause, making me think we all need to be more careful,” 26-year-old Ali C told New York Post. She explained that she now takes extra care to keep herself safe while walking her dog. "I carry my mace, so in general I feel safe, I have my dog; if people come near me — or at me — she barks, so in general I feel safe, but you can’t be too careful," she said.
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Inna Budaeva, 34, who comes to the park to bicycle, said she tries to avoid the path and not come alone. “I mean I don’t usually feel safe in parks but especially now,” Budaeva said. Nicola Lagonigro, 64, said that although she believed she was tough, one can never be too safe as a woman. “I’ll just carry around a bigger knife,” she said.
This incident comes days after the abduction and murder of Eliza Fletcher that shocked Memphis and instilled a sense of fear in the minds of residents. Tennessee police Fletcher's body soon after she was kidnapped while out jogging. The 34-year-old mother-of-two was forced into a black SUV in a “violent” manner while being abducted and a pair of sandals left at the scene led the police to her alleged abductor, Cleotha Abston, who reportedly stalked her and waited for her to run past him on her morning jog before he could ambush her. Her body was later discovered by the steps of a run-down one-story property only yards away from where police last spotted the vehicle she was forced into. Abston, who killed her, was arrested soon after. Authorities have yet to confirm Fletcher’s cause of death. She was an elementary school teacher and the granddaughter of a hardware company billionaire, the late Joseph Orgill III.
Abston was later also charged with an unrelated kidnapping and rape that happened a year earlier. This information was revealed by DNA evidence compiled from his most recent arrest. During a hearing on Thursday, September 8, the 38-year-old was handed down a second indictment with a judge denying him bail. The new charges appeared in the Shelby County criminal justice portal. Abston was rebooked on new charges of aggravated rape, especially aggravated kidnapping, and unlawful carrying of a weapon. According to Memphis Police, the new charges come in connection with a rape kit sent to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in September 2021 after an unidentified woman approached the police about the alleged crimes.