Bright yellow jacket was undoing of suspect in NYC rape: NYPD sources
A homeless man was busted Saturday for the horrific New Year’s Eve strangulation rape by a bogus deliveryman, thanks to Manhattan cops who spotted a jaywalker in a canary yellow jacket — the same distinctive color worn by the attacker, sources told The Post.
Public Safety Officers with the 13th Precinct were sitting in a police car near the location of the rape at East 30th Street and Third Avenue in Kip’s Bay at 1 a.m., when a man in a puffy yellow jacket fitting the rapist’s description walked right in front of them, sources said.
They recognized him from surveillance photos, sources said after the arrest of Elijah Kelly, 23, who lived at the nearby and notorious 30th Street Men’s Shelter next to Bellevue Hospital.
The massive, 1,000-bed facility has sheltered dozens of homeless sex offenders at a time.
Kelly has at least three strangulation accusations on his rap sheet, the earliest from fights with women in 2017 and 2019, police sources said. It was unclear what the disposition of those two cases was.
At the time of the rape, Kelly was free without bail on an open Queens misdemeanor choking case from May. He had an additional open petit larceny case from June, also in Queens, public records show.
His attorney of record on those two open cases did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kelly was taken into custody on the New Year’s Eve rape without incident — wearing the same jacket he wore in the rape, sources alleged.
Kelly allegedly still had the victim’s credit card — and an ATM withdrawal receipt — in his jacket pocket.
The 27-year-old victim had opened her door just before noon on New Year’s Eve, believing that she was getting a delivery, only to be choked unconscious by the suspect, police said.
She regained consciousness as she was being raped, she told cops.
At his arraignment late Saturday, a Manhattan judge ordered he be held in lieu of $100,000 cash bail, or a $300,000 bond, on charges including rape, robbery, felony assault, strangulation, burglary and grand larceny.
In asking that Kelly be held in lieu of any bail, prosecutors alleged that Kelly was actually holding a package when he knocked on his victim’s door.
Kelly demanded money, leaving with her credit card and PIN code — and warned her he’d kill her if she called cops, prosecutors said.
At the Men’s Shelter on Saturday night, Kelly’s fellow residents told The Post he gives homeless men a bad name — and that they were glad the violent crime was solved.
“It makes it look bad for us,” said resident Hector Miolan Perez, 37.
“I’m glad they caught him. You don’t want people like that around. It makes it look bad for the shelter.”
Additional reporting by Alex Taylor, Larry Celona and Sam Raskin
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