Musings, Nits, and Praises: What a Horrible World We Can Make It

Musings, Nits, and Praises

A farrago of all things deemed blog-worthy by a music-loving, poetry-writing, humor-seeking English teacher


What a Horrible World We Can Make It

I have nothing even remotely articulate to say at this point about the shootings at Virginia Tech.

Then, as I was chatting with a friend in Little Rock this afternoon, he informed me that the sister-in-law of a fellow we know from college was tortured and raped in New York:

Tied-up Columbia student left to die used fire set by creep to free herself

BY JIMMY VIELKIND, LISA L. COLANGELO and MELISSA GRACE
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Monday, April 16th 2007, 4:00 AM

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Tied up and left to die in a burning apartment, a Columbia student used the blaze set by her sadistic rapist to free herself, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday.

"It appears she was able to escape as a result of the fire," Kelly said. "She was tied, and the flame was used by her to break the bond."

The 23-year-old woman, identified by sources as a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, endured 19 hours of rape and torture at the hands of a sick creep in her Hamilton Heights apartment Friday night.

In what Kelly called a "particularly vicious" assault, the fiend tied his victim to a bed, cut her, raped her, burned her with scalding water and chemicals - and then set the woman's futon on fire to cover up the crime, police said.

He was so brutal he slit her eyelids, Kelly said.

The student used the flames to free herself and fled her fifth-floor apartment with her hands still bound to each other to get help from a neighbor, officials said.

The woman remains hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

Cops yesterday were combing through surveillance video for images of the attacker, who followed the woman into her building near City College at 9:30 p.m.

Kelly said detectives were looking to see if there was any evidence the rapist had attacked before, but said, "It does not appear right now to be part of a pattern."
One man said he saw the victim in the basement of the building shortly after she escaped.

"She just kept saying, 'I've been raped,' " said Ronald Ward, 19, who spotted the fire and ran downstairs for help, where he found the building's superintendent, Carl Peroune, trying to soothe the woman as they waited for an ambulance.
"She was down there crying," Ward said.

Police were hunting for the attacker, described as a bald, 6-foot-1, 180-pound black man in his 30s with a goatee and a scar on his abdomen.

Several residents of the woman's six-story Hamilton Terrace building, located on a quiet treelined block of neat rowhouses, said she had moved in within the last two months.

"I've been living in this building 30 years, and nothing like this ever happened," said another resident, Teddy Perkins, 55. "This is real shocking."

1 Responses to “What a Horrible World We Can Make It”

  1. # Blogger Eli Perkins

    Jason, how are you? I am not commenting on your post, but I wanted to get in touch with you because we are moving to Austin. Are you still teaching there? I wanted to ask your opinion on the housing/renting market/area in Austin, and to see if you happen to know anyone that has a house that needs house sitting this summer, or anything like that. You can email me at eperkin3@utk.edu. Thanks for any advice you have!

    Eli Perkins  

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