A man charged with raping a 15-year-old girl in a Bronx stairwell had recently been released from prison — where he spent eight years for sexually assaulting a young boy and throwing him off a rooftop, authorities said.
Carmine Aska, 29, had been out of prison for less than one month when he allegedly attacked the teen, with whom he was riding in an elevator in an apartment building in Co-Op City in February. Aska punched the girl in the face, causing her to fall to the floor, and when the elevator doors opened, he displayed a knife and dragged her into the stairwell, according to the Bronx District Attorney’s office.
Once inside the stairwell, he forced the teen to perform oral sex before raping her, and afterward made her spit into a napkin before fleeing, officials charged.
“This is a nightmare for the young victim who was viciously assaulted by the defendant,” D.A. Darcel Clark said in a statement. “He allegedly punched her, overpowered her, and took her at knifepoint into a stairwell and raped her. This defendant will now face justice for this heinous act.”
A jury previously convicted Aska of attempted murder for throwing a 9-year-old boy off the rooftop of a six-story apartment building in the Bronx in 2013 — when Aska was 17 — after the boy threatened to report Aska for sexually abusing him, according to newspaper reports at the time. Aska was locked up in 2017 and served eight years in state prison before being released on parole in January, prison records show.
The little boy suffered a broken leg, broken arm and internal bleeding, and for a time was on life support in a medically-induced coma at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, but eventually recovered.
Aska was charged with predatory sexual assault against a child, rape, sexual abuse and criminal weapons possession.