The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office missed Friday’s deadline to take the notorious gang rape case before a grand jury.
The DA now has six months to prepare a case against five teenagers accused of raping a 18-year-old girl in a Brooklyn Park on Jan. 7.
All but 1 of the defendants were released on bond. A 17-year-old is being held on an unrelated assault charge.
“We need more time to investigate this complex case and gather more evidence. So, therefore, we have consented to the defendants’ release,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson in a statement obtained by the Post.
The NY Post reports the DA’s office is “stalling for time” because new evidence may lend credence to the teenagers’ claims that they interrupted the girl having sexual intercourse with her father in the darkened park.
The girl told police she was drinking beer with her 39-year-old father near Osborn playground’s handball court when the 5 teens approached.
She said one of them pulled a gun and ordered her father to run.
But smartphone footage taken from one of the suspect’s cell phone shows the girl smiling and laughing with the suspects.
Investigators who viewed the video footage now suspect the girl may have given consent to have sex with at least 2 of the suspects.
In a short clip viewed by The Post, the girl is sitting on the ground, naked from the waist down, while her father stands nearby.
One of the teens asked the older man, “Can we have some of that?”
Another teen asked the girl for sex. She reportedly replied, “it’s lit”, meaning they have the green light to proceed.
A young man then tells the girl, “You said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s what I’m saying, it’s lit, like you know what I mean? I could tell you a freak,” according to sources.
Both the girl and her father were reportedly drunk. The father was so inebriated that pedestrians told police they couldn’t understand his slurred speech when he approached them.
“He didn’t tell me it was an emergency, or ‘I need to call the police’ or of course I would’ve given it to him or just called the police for him,” a witness told the Post.
Police obtained a sample of the father’s DNA. He vigorously denied having sex with his daughter in response to a reporter’s question. The reporter watched as the father purchased 2 beers at a deli near his apartment.
Father and daughter recently reunited after 15 years. The girl’s mother is no longer in her life.
