Queens prosecutors last month dropped attempted rape charges filed against a Bayside man after DNA evidence proved he was not responsible for the crime.
The Queens District Attorney’s office officially dropped charges against Kenneth King, 41, on July 10 after tests performed on DNA found on the victim’s sweater showed King was not the suspect sought in the attack.
King was held on Riker’s Island for nine months, between his arrest in September 2011 and his release in May 2012.
King was a traveling chef at the time of the Sept. 28, 2011 rape, law enforcement sources said. “He worked at places along the East Coast until he decided to move back to Bayside to care for his 90-year-old grandmother.”
Cops said the 33-year-old victim was confronted by a man as she walked along the north service road of the Cross Island Parkway, near 146th Street on the morning of Sept. 28, 2011, police said.
The suspect shoved the woman into some nearby bushes and jumped in after her, but was scared off by a passerby who spotted the attack, police said.
A police sketch of the suspect was posted throughout the area in the weeks following the attack, police sources said. “Someone called police to identify Mr. King as the suspect,” the sources said.
King was called in to the 111th Precinct for a lineup, but the passerby struggled with the ID, law enforcement sources said. But, based on the identification, King was arrested and charged with the attempted rape, the sources said.
King told investigators he was with his grandmother at Flushing Hospital Center on the morning of the attack.
“He said his grandmother suffered a leg injury and he was taking care of her,” law enforcement sources said. “He did not call his job to tell them he was at the hospital and hospital employees could not say for sure, that he was there.”
King’s attorney made repeated requests for DNA testing of the woman’s sweater, which ultimately cleared his client.
The Queens District Attorney’s office acknowledged the charges were dropped on July 10 but was not able to comment further on the case.