A 57-year-old man has been arrested for attempted rape just ten days after being released from Rikers Island.
On April 15, Robert Pondexter was released from Rikers Island in New York as a way to alleviate the mass passing of the coronavirus within the prison. However, Pondexter immediately went back to a life of crime when just ten days after being let go, he attempted to sexually assault a 58-year-old woman. As he was crossing the street from supportive housing development Concern Heights Apartments, Pondexter snatched the woman by her collar and dragged her into a school parking lot.
The woman says she did not know the ex-convict and said Pondexter choked her and forced her to perform oral sex on him. The man demanded that she remove her pants, but the woman says she was able to kick him and escape. According to DailyMail.com, the woman was taken to the hospital, and Pondexter was arrested at the scene of the attack. Police say the man was found with a crack pipe at around 5:45 a.m. on Saturday on East New York Avenue in Brooklyn.
Pondexter is now looking at attempted rape and sexual assault charges, as well as others, according to sources. The man was previously detained on an old rape charge connected to an attack on another woman. The prior victim was someone he allegedly knew and used drugs with. Daily Mail reports that the initial charges were dropped against him when the victim decided not to cooperate with authorities. Reports show he was jailed for an unrelated parole violation. Rikers released Pondexter in an effort to practice social distancing amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Rikers houses around 5,300 inmates. According to the New York Post, Pondexter was still awaiting arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Sunday evening.
New York is still the epicenter of the virus in the U.S. There are 282,000 cases in the city and nearly 16,600 deaths related to the disease. Two-thousand inmates have been released since the middle of March to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
