Disturbing new details about a man’s alleged attack on a pair of 13-year-old New York teens have been revealed, after community members who recognized him from social media beat him up and conducted a citizen’s arrest.
Christian Inga faces charges of rape, sex abuse, robbery, menacing, unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, endangering the welfare of a child and possession of a weapon following a horrific incident involving the teens last Thursday in Queens.
During his arraignment on Wednesday, prosecutors said Inga admitted to the crimes on video, adding that he has a drug problem. The criminal complaint, via CBS, also detailed his account of what happened — with Inga telling authorities he told the two teens, one male and one female, to “shut up” before tying them together with a shoelace. He then took their cell phones, cut off their clothes with what’s been described as a “machete-style knife” and sexually assaulted the young girl.
Per the DA, he also recorded the incident.
While the incident happened a week ago, the suspect was apprehended early Tuesday morning after a number of community members allegedly recognized Inga from surveillance images distributed across social media.
On Monday, NYPD Crimestoppers released photos of the suspect online, showing the man on a bike and describing him as “a light-skinned man, 5’5″ tall, curly hair, wearing red sneakers and a green backpack” who also has “a bull tattoo with horns on his chest and braces.”
Around 1am on Tuesday, a group of people spotted Inga at a deli and sprung into action.
“I come and I just like grabbed him out the store because that situation got me mad like, you know?” Jeffrey Flores told CBS New York. “I got two little sisters. I’m about to have a daughter, you know? I couldn’t just, you know, walk away.”
“After that, I ain’t gonna lie, everybody just started beating on him,” he said, with the group allegedly using a belt to tie up Inga’s legs to keep him from fleeing.
“He kept saying, ‘Help, help, help,’ and then I would say, I told him to shut up. That’s what the girls was yelling when he was—” Flores told the outlet. “One less guy on the street that is, you know, messing up the world.”
The group then called police, who found the suspect underneath a car when they arrived. NYPD Commissioner Edward Cabán praised the group, saying, “This is exactly what we mean when we talk about public safety is a shared responsibility. The past few days proved to the world again that the people in this city can come together and get the job done like no one else.”
The teens, meanwhile, were also praised by Councilmember Sandra Ung, for how they were able to “provide police with a detailed description of their attacker that ultimately helped identify this suspect” under an “unbelievably traumatic circumstance.”
According to the NYPD, Inga entered the US from Ecuador on June 25, 2021. While he was arrested in Texas for entering the country illegally at the time, he was released from custody while waiting for processing. DNA collected at the time reportedly matched a water bottle at the crime scene.
Inga didn’t enter a plea Wednesday and is being held on bail.
