Prosecutors investigating an 18-year-old woman's report of being gang raped by five teenage boys in a Brooklyn playground last week have told a judge they need more time to gather evidence before they decide whether to take the case before a grand jury.
The Brooklyn district attorney's office notified the judge on Friday, the deadline for releasing the teens if there was no indictment.
Four of the defendants were out of jail on Friday. The fifth was being held on an unrelated assault case.
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson said Thursday the teens arrested in the alleged attack in Brownsville's Osborn Playground would be released pending on going investigation.
“Because we are determined to get to the truth about what happened in that park, we need more time to investigate this complex case and gather more evidence. So, therefore, we have consented to the defendants’ release,” Thompson said.
Thompson's office will have six months to present the case to a grand jury, and the charges against the teens will remain pending until then. There are no stipulations to their release, but they'd likely be taken back into custody after a potential indictment.
The teens were all arrested after the woman and her father alleged that they accosted the pair in the Park last week. One of the suspects allegedly pointed a gun at the father, told him to leave and raped his daughter after he left.
The father, who didn't have a cellphone, ran two blocks to a housing development and found two patrol officers, who returned to the park to find the woman visibly upset, with cuts and bruises, police say.
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The teenage suspects -- one of whom is 14 years old, two of whom are 15, and two of whom are 17 -- have said that the encounter with the woman was consensual, and defense attorneys revealed the existence of a video clip that they claim shows a partially undressed woman smiling and laughing during her nighttime encounter with five teens in a public park.
They also claimed that the woman and her father were drunk, and neither could pick them out of a police lineup.
Police said Wednesday that there was strong evidence to indicate the woman had been attacked.
