MANHATTAN — A tip led to the Monday arrest of an ex-con suspected of breaking into an Inwood woman's home and sexually assaulting her while threatening her with a screwdriver, police said.
Yenson Reyes, who is 35 and has been arrested 30 times, lives on Seaman Avenue near where the attack occurred, police said. He is charged with breaking into a 26-year-old woman's 213th Street home on Sunday and sexually assaulting her, police said.
Reyes fled the scene and was arrested the next day after someone recognized him from media reports and called police, an NYPD spokesman said.
The victim in the Sunday assault had noticed that Reyes had numbers tattooed across his stomach, police said. Those turned out to be his Florida Department of Corrections identification number, police said. Florida records also describe various tattoos snaking up his arms.
"There's no shortage of ink on this fellow. He had ink all over his body," said NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce.
"That led to his identification and arrest," Boyce added.
He was set to be arraigned on charges of performing a criminal sex act, unlawful imprisonment, robbery and burglary in connection to the weekend attack, an NYPD spokesman said Tuesday.
"This man is a career criminal. As I said, I don't think he's sane, in some respects. I think he's sane for the court, but he does really silly things," said Boyce said.
"In the past month, he's been a one-man crime wave," Boyce said.
Apart from the Sunday sexual assault, Reyes committed five petit larcenies, one grand larceny, three robberies and two home invasions, Boyce said.
Reyes is also expected to be charged in connection to an Oct. 6 incident in which he broke into a home on 212th Street and threatened a 66-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl with a kitchen knife, police said.
When he groped the girl, she screamed, so he fled through a bathroom window, officials said. Police did not immediately say how they connected him to the Oct. 6 incident.
He was expected to be charged with sexual abuse, burglary, menacing, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon in the Oct. 6 incident, police said.
Reyes may be behind another home invasion in October, Boyce said.
He also would catch rides in cabs only to ask for the driver's phone and then run off with it when they reached his destination, Boyce said.
Reyes been arrested 29 times by the NYPD and once in Florida, according to records and officials. Records for 10 of those arrests are sealed, but the rest date back to 1999 and show a crime career that includes robbery, grand larceny, various drug charges, driving without a license and other charges.
In 2013, a Florida court found him guilty of an attempted burglary in 2011, witness tampering later that year and an altercation with emergency responders, records show.
He was released two years later, records show.
