Williams is accused of impersonating an officer then taking a 45-year-old woman to this apartment building where he robbed and raped her.View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Gabriela Resto-Montero
By Gabriela Resto-Montero, Shayna Jacobs and Jon Schuppe
DNAinfo Reporters/Producers
MANHATTAN — Prosecutors defended their decision not to pursue a rape charge against a Hamilton Heights man, who, after being released on bail, allegedly returned to the scene of his first crime and raped another woman.
Taurean Williams, 25, was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge of possession of stolen property after he was accused of raping and robbing a 17-year-old girl on the roof of a building on W. 153rd Street, near Broadway, on Oct. 12.
The rape charge, and several other serious criminal counts, were dismissed, according to documents.
That left Williams free on New Year's Day when police said he stopped another woman on the street by touting a fake NYPD badge and took her back up to the same rooftop and raped her.
Prosecutor Scott Leet told DNAinfo that the October incident "was fully investigated by my office," but that it was "determined we could not go forward with the sex crimes charge."
He did not elaborate, but said the decision was reached "with the teenage victim's mother."
Residents in Hamilton Heights, however, were angered Tuesday that Williams wasn't behind bars after the first alleged rape.
"I don't understand how the authorities work around here, because if this man raped someone, how did they let him out after so little time?" said Lody Gilbert, a longtime tenant of the W. 153rd Street building.
Police said that in the latest incident Williams, pulling out a fake police badge and two guns, asked his victim for identification, police said. She said she didn’t have any. Williams told her he would escort her to a local precinct house.
Instead, he went back to the roof of the W. 153rd Street building where he raped her and stole her cell phone, police said.
The five-story building looks like a place where a criminal would have little trouble bringing victims. The front door has no lock, and is held shut by twine. Inside the vestibule, a plastic door with a broken lock leads into a dingy lobby. A back door with a broken lock leads into a yard that abuts a vacant lot.
Rafael Abreu, the building's janitor, said vagrants often come into the building and sleep on the roof. He said the front door lock had been broken for about three weeks. But documents on file with the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the building was cited for broken lock at the entrance in 2007, a violation that remains open.
Neither of Williams' alleged victims lived in the building, Abreu said.
Gilbert, a member of the building's tenants association, said the superintendent has fixed the front lock repeatedly over the years, but vandals always returned and broke it.
Elica Morales, who lives on the third floor, said she was "pretty shaken up" by reports of the two sex attacks. Despite the security problems, she said she didn't feel in any danger.
