Early Saturday morning, a 21-year-old actress was allegedly beaten and raped by a homeless man in Hudson River Park. Police arrested and charged 25-year-old Jonathan Stewart, a registered Level III sex offender, with rape. Stewart was arraigned yesterday via video from Bellevue Hospital (where he is still recovering after reportedly trying to hang himself)—and it came out that Stewart allegedly raped the victim TWO times that morning.
Stewart first allegedly sat next to the woman on a bench near Harrison and West Streets at about 5:15 a.m.; he made conversation with her before he allegedly dragged her into the bushes and raped her. After the first attack, the woman briefly got free, but Stewart chased after her, grabbed her by the throat, punched her, dragged her back to the bushes and sexually assaulted her again. The whole ordeal lasted around 20 minutes, before the woman was able to get free once again and find cops nearby.
“I was looking him in the eyes [asking] him, ‘How can you do this? Don’t you have a mother and sister?’ ” the Tribeca woman told the Daily News. “He was like, ‘They’re dead. Shut up’...It was a nightmare...It seemed like it lasted forever.” Stewart was paroled in July after seven years in prison on a robbery and sex-abuse conviction (he assaulted a female relative).
