A registered sex offender has been identified as the suspect in the horrific sex attack and robbery of a 31-year-old German tourist as she walked back to her Airbnb in Manhattan last week.
Police said Monday they are looking to question Keon Robinson, 28, in connection with Thursday's 3 a.m. attack in Harlem, which was captured on surveillance. The video shows the suspect snatch the woman's purse, then repeatedly punch her; police say she was hit so hard her teeth fell out.
The woman falls to the ground, unconscious, and the suspect gropes her all over her body. (Warning: some may find elements of the above video disturbing.)
Robinson is a former parolee who served seven years for first-degree robbery and first-degree sexual abuse. He was released in 2014 and is a registered Level 3 sex offender, meaning authorities believe him to have a high-risk for repeat crimes and consider him an ongoing potential threat to public safety.
Robinson was jailed again, this time on a parole violation, last summer, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said at a news briefing Monday. He got out in January. The pattern of attacks began several months later, Boyce said.
Boyce said detectives want to question Robinson in connection with at least two other violent attacks, including a similar attack on April 24 in Hamilton Heights and another one April 27. In the April 24 attack, the suspect walked up to a woman in her 30s on Bradhurst Avenue in Manhattan and told her, "This could be easy. I have a gun. This could be your day," according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. The woman started screaming and the man punched her, then stole her purse, Boyce said.
The April 27 attack involved another robbery, but Boyce said the May 4 attack was the only one of the three to involve a sex crime.
Police say Robinson is known to frequent Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Anyone with information on Robinson's whereabouts is asked to call police. Boyce said he's considered to be armed and dangerous.
Police had arrested a 28-year-old Bronx man on Friday in the April 24 attack, but later determined he was not involved and released him, according to DNAInfo.
