LEWD & ELUDE!
B’klyn rape susp outfoxes cops
THE BROOKLYN teen suspected of raping an 82-year-old woman is one slippery sicko.
Asa Roberts, 18, managed to narrowly elude officers three times after they tracked him to two Crown Heights buildings Tuesday night and a Bedford-Stuyvesant building Thursday night, sources said. Detectives first chased Roberts to a building on Crown St. after receiving a tip from the suspect’s aunt, who said he was heading to the area Tuesday night to collect money from relatives , police sources said.
The detectives waited for backup — and by the time they began scouring the residential complex, Roberts was gone, sources said. His black sweatshirt was later found in the back of the building.
The deviant — first arrested for a sex crime when he was 9 — is believed to have changed his clothes inside a pal’s apartment and bolted out a different exit.
“He must have had a friend in the building who gave him a change of clothes, although I can’t believe this guy has any friends now,” a police source said. The pursuit didn’t end there. Several hours after Roberts narrowly avoided capture, officers raced one block over to a Carroll St. address after his cell phone “ping” was traced to that location, sources said.
Cops in a helicopter conducted surveillance overhead and Emergency Service Unit officers launched a door-to-door search. But Roberts, once again, was nowhere to be found, sources said.
A witness told cops he took off moments before they arrived. Surveillance video showed a man fitting Roberts’ description escaping the building via the roof. He later turned off his phone, complicating police efforts to track him down, sources said.
On Thursday night, Roberts was tracked to Our Lady of Good Counsel SRO on Madison St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, but he again got away as some 100 officers bore down on the address around 5 p.m., police sources said.
A man fitting Roberts’ description jumped from the six-story roof onto a neighboring four-story building — across a 6-foot air shaft, police sources said.
Cops found a pair of shoes on a fire escape and believe their target ran off barefoot, a source said. Police searched at least three surrounding buildings and a church, but suspended the operation shortly after midnight.
“We’re back to square one,” said one disheartened source.
“We finally tracked him down, and now he’s gone,” another added.
The aunt who tipped off investigators also told them she received an earlier call from Roberts saying he was in Coney Island and planning to kill himself, sources said.
A different aunt told the Daily News Roberts’ mother met with him at a store on Crown St. at Nostrand Ave. Tuesday night — and tried to convince him to surrender.
“They blocked off the whole of Crown and Nostrand, helicopters, dogs, everything,” said aunt Naya Jackson (inset). “They had the whole precinct there and they still couldn’t get him.”
Cops say Roberts — after slipping into a Brighton Beach home through an unlocked door — punched, choked, raped and sodomized the helpless victim.
During the 41/2-hour assault early Monday, Roberts forced the battered woman to swear on a Bible that she would not send the police after him, she told relatives.
A fingerprint lifted from the victim’s bedroom dresser was matched Roberts’ left middle finger, cops said, and he was captured on video both arriving and leaving the victim’s
home.
Brooklyn Councilman Chaim Deutsch is offering a $5,000 reward on top of the NYPD’s $2,500, for information leading to Roberts’ conviction.
Roberts’ mother told The News she wants him to surrender.
“I’m telling him to turn himself in,” said Janasia Jackson, 34, who is eight months pregnant. “I know in my heart he’s not capable of sexual assault. I want him to be able to prove his innocence.”