Reputed MS-13 Gang Member Charged With Raping 11-Year-Old Brooklyn Girl

NEW YORK — An 18-year-old believed to be affiliated with the MS-13 gang was arraigned Sunday on charges that he raped an 11-year-old girl in her bed after breaking in through her second-floor bedroom window in Brooklyn, law enforcement officials said.

Julio C. Ayala, who lives a few blocks from where the girl was attacked, was held on $500,000 bail after appearing in Brooklyn Criminal Court on charges of rape, burglary, criminal sex act, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. Ayala, who a police source said was born in El Salvador, was carrying a forged green card and a forged Social Security card at the time of his arrest, according to the criminal complaint.

Family members were awakened Wednesday at 11:30 p.m. by the girl’s screams and called 911 as the man escaped through the window of their home in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, police said. The girl was treated at a hospital and released, the authorities said.

On Saturday, the police released two surveillance videos hoping that members of the public could help identify a suspect in the assault that shocked neighbors near the girl’s home. One showed a young man walking nearby shortly after the attack, pulling a sweatshirt over his tank top.

Within hours, a caller helped the police identify a suspect.

Ayala, of East 21st Street, fled out a window of his apartment around 2:30 p.m. Saturday as officers approached, police said. With helicopter support, investigators tracked him to a building construction site around the corner, on Flatbush Avenue, said Sgt. Lee Jones, a Police Department spokesman.

There, Ayala was cornered by dozens of police officers who, according to neighbors, had brought in a dog to help locate him. By 3 p.m. Saturday, the street had been blocked off by police tape and barricades, said Mike Picereli, 54, who watched from the pizza shop where he works.

“A lot of police, a lot of special forces. Nobody got hurt, but you know how it is when things happen, people get together,” he said, referring to the large crowd that formed around the building as officers tracked the man down. “People were yelling, saying, ‘Put him behind the bars. That guy, never let go.'”

Vallan Peters, 52, who works at a sewing shop two doors down from the building where Ayala was found, said neighbors and onlookers had surrounded the police cars.

“He wasn’t actually coming out because the mob was angry, so the cops tried to protect him and shield him,” Peters said.

Edwin Zepeda, who works at the Grandes Ligas Dominican barbershop across from the building, said officers had to stop a woman from attacking Ayala. “Everybody was upset. Everybody wanted to know who it was,” he said. It took about 20 minutes for the man to be taken out of the building by officers, Zepeda said.

Jones said Sunday that police “have information that he is affiliated with MS-13” but offered no additional details.

Victoria Nunez, an assistant district attorney, said during the arraignment that Ayala had admitted to detectives that he was in the bedroom, telling them, “I have never done anything like that before.” She said that the victim and Ayala were strangers, and that the girl had failed to identify Ayala in a lineup.

His lawyer, Anna Boksenbaum, a public defender, said Ayala lived with an aunt and uncle and two cousins in Brooklyn, and worked full time for his uncle’s air-conditioning company. Nunez said Ayala moved to Brooklyn from Virginia a few months ago. His next court date is Friday.

Nunez said the girl saw Ayala perched on top of an air-conditioning unit outside the window of the two-story home. After gaining entry, he climbed onto the top bunk where the 11-year-old was sleeping and raped her, Nunez said. She said the victim’s brother was in the bottom bed.

Both parents were home but unaware of the break-in until they heard their daughter scream, Nunez said. Ayala went out the window, leaving behind a red Chicago Bulls cap that he was seen wearing on surveillance video in the vicinity before the attack, according to prosecutors.

A spokeswoman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said she was not able to immediately provide information on Ayala’s status.

The MS-13 gang, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a multinational criminal gang founded in Los Angeles by Salvadoran refugees fleeing a civil war in the 1980s. Known for the brutality of its crimes, it is believed to have more than 10,000 members in the United States, according to the Justice Department. MS-13 members in the United States are mostly concentrated in or around Los Angeles, Washington and Long Island, and tend to be immigrants or the children of immigrants from El Salvador and other Central American nations. There is also MS-13 activity in New York City. In August, the FBI said that its Safe Streets Gang Task Forces in Queens and Long Island had arrested more than 45 MS-13 members in the area since January 2016, charging them with murder, attempted murder, arson and assault. Brooklyn cases are rarer. Nationally, about 1,200 members of MS-13 were arrested between October 2016 and the end of 2017.

President Donald Trump has spoken frequently of MS-13 as an example of why immigration laws need to be tightly controlled, but critics have said he is overplaying the gang’s threat. According to law enforcement data, MS-13 members represent only 1 percent of the estimated 1.4 million total gang members of all kinds in the United States, and a tiny fraction of Central American immigrants overall.

The idea that the gang may be operating locally came as a shock to people in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.

“I don’t hear about them in our neighborhood, I mostly hear about them in Long Island,” said Denese Robinson, a resident who said she believes the attack is likely an isolated incident.

Jean Borgella, who also lives nearby, said he hoped the suspected link to MS-13 did not lead the case to be politicized or used as an argument against immigration.

“It’s not good for the family, it’s not good for our community,” said Borgella, 43. “And it doesn’t help us solve the problems that we really need to solve.”