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Rapist Charged With Robbing Woman With 8 Kids in Bed-Stuy Elevator

By Paul DeBenedetto | August 22, 2013 3:28pm | Updated on August 22, 2013 5:07pm
Alleged Robbery Suspect
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NYPD

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT — A man who served 15 years for rape was arrested last week after allegedly robbing and threatening a daycare worker with eight children in a Bed-Stuy elevator, authorities said on Thursday.

But his attorney said he has proof that the man was nowhere near the crime when it happened.

Oneil Borgella, 36, was charged with robbery, grand larceny, menacing, petit larceny, attempted assault and harassment for the Aug. 12 incident, in which police and sources said he followed a 39-year-old daycare worker and eight children into an elevator inside Ms. Andrea's Happy Feet at 1711 Fulton St. about 2:30 p.m.

His lawyer, Alan Levin, said that a separate video shows Borgella at 106th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem at the time of the alleged robbery.

"Unless he can split himself into two individuals, theres no way he could have done the alleged crime," Levin said.

According to the complaint filed in Brooklyn Criminal Court, Borgella, of Midtown, pulled out what he said was a concealed gun and threatened the woman and children.

"Give me your jewelry and your money or I'm going to shoot you in front of the kids," Borgella allegedly said, according to the complaint.

Borgella then allegedly took the woman's necklace, bracelet and rings before fleeing on a bicycle, according to the complaint.

He was arrested and arraigned on Aug. 16 and ordered held on $5,000 bail, according to a spokesman from the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office. 

Borgella has a criminal history stretching back to 1995, according to the District Attorney's office, with six prior arrests. He pleaded guilty to the rape charge in 1998, and just last month he was arrested for criminal trespass, on July 18.

That case is ongoing, the spokesman said.