Police Make One Arrest In Robbery, Rape In Kingsessing
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Philadelphia police say they have made an arrest in the robbery and rape attack on a couple in the Kingsessing neighborhood on Tuesday night.
Authorities say two teenagers robbed a local couple Tuesday night about 10pm near the corner of 48th Street and Springfield Avenue, then the older of the teens raped the woman in front of her boyfriend.
Capt. John Darby, head of the Philadelphia Police Department's special victims unit, credits an intensive investigation by a joint task force for the arrest. He says the 18-year-old suspect was taken into custody last night following a nonstop investigation that involved the FBI and several police units.
Darby declined to identify the suspect but says he is also suspected in a number of other robberies. He's been charged with 19 crimes in connection with the incident.
Darby says the suspects accosted a couple walking home from dinner, pulled a gun, robbed them, but didn't stop there.
"The gunwielding offender, putting a gun to the head of not only the female victim but a male friend, sexually assaults this female in the alley," Darby said today.
With the gun-toting thief raping his girlfriend, the 40-year-old male victim told CBS-3 Eyewitness News last night that all he could do was pray for it all to be over quickly.
"I kept looking at his gun because I was trying to make a decision if I was going to go for the gun, but she was pleading for me not to, that she needed me here," the male victim said.
And Capt. Darby says police are still looking for the younger accomplice, about 13 years old, who fled before the rape.
The victim's boyfriend has provided details of the crime and says he hopes the younger boy will come forward.
"The kid could do the right thing, choose a different path in his life," the male victim told CBS-3 Eyewitness News.
Reported by Pat Loeb, KYW Newsradio 1060 and Elizabeth Hur, CBS 3
