Girl, 13, Sexually Assaulted at Knife Point in Queens Park, Police Say

A man with a “machete-style knife” on Thursday afternoon forced a 13-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy into a wooded area of a Queens park where the girl was sexually assaulted, the police said.

The schoolmates were walking inside Kissena Park, in Flushing, when a man approached them at around 3 p.m. and demanded that they follow him into the woods, said Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives, at a news conference on Friday. When the children balked, the man displayed the knife and told them to “shut up,” Chief Kenny said.

In a secluded area of the nearly 240-acre park, the suspect tied the children’s wrists together using a shoelace before assaulting the girl, Chief Kenny said.

The police described the suspect as a light-skinned man in his 20s with a “heavy Spanish accent,” braces and a tattoo of a red-eyed bull or another horned animal on the left side of his chest. He told the children to stay in place for 20 minutes, then stole their phones and ran, Chief Kenny said.

Law enforcement authorities did not indicate whether either of the children knew the attacker. On Friday morning, officers were canvassing the area for cameras and working to identify the man. The Police Department offered a $10,000 reward for any information.

At the news conference, Jeffrey Maddrey, the chief of department, called the assault “a parent’s nightmare.”