A Fire Department EMT was arrested today for a string of sexual assaults in Brooklyn dating back to 2001, including the rape of an 11-year-old girl. Angel Pascal, 33, who was honored at the FDNY's 2007 Medal Day for saving a patient's life, was charged with rape, sexual abuse, criminal sex act and child endangerment. He was caught two days after he allegedly raped a 20-year-old woman, who was able to jot down his license plate number.
Police say that Pascal used a "fireman's key," a universal key that allows access to subway grates and elevators across the city, in order to trap the 11-year-old in an elevator with him, where he proceeded to sodomize her at gunpoint. Police allege that Pascal first struck back in 2001, when he pushed his way into a 22-year-old woman's home, pointed a gun to her face and raped her. Between May 2009 and today, he is accused of assaulting another four women, including sodomizing a 19-year-old girl at knifepoint in May, and the attempted rape of a 14-year-old girl in a Canarsie building on Oct. 20.
Pascal has worked as an emergency medical technician for the FDNY for the past five years, and received two citations in that time. He was also arrested and charged with domestic abuse earlier this year; during an argument with his girlfriend, Pascal punched her in the back and face, and hit her with a toilet paper rack, and held a lead pipe to her throat. Earlier this week, one of the EMTs accused of ignoring a dying pregnant woman was fatally shot in Soho.
