Police Search For Child Predator in BP

PEACE OF MIND IS GONE IN A FLASH

By ANDREA PEYSER

May 5, 2006 -- THE girl is 17, slim and pretty, but she could pass for 12. Which may be why the twisted sex fiend tried to pluck her off the street.

But the quick-thinking teen got away.

Now the neighborhood is in shock. Will the next child be so lucky?

It was 8:30 in the morning, and the teen was walking toward the subway in her Borough Park neighborhood for the ride to Frankin Delano Roosevelt HS. The morning was fine.

The neighborhood, dominated by clannish Orthodox Jews, is safe. Or so she thought.

She did not see the man coming until it was too late.

"Come on. C'mon," he said to her. And he showed her a badge. He told her to get inside the car. He meant business.

Fortunately, the young lady was ready for him.

"She started screaming, and she ran" said the young lady's grandmother - her "Na Na" - whose English bears the intonation of her native Croatia.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God!" said the stricken grandma.

We sat in the living room of the house the grandmother has occupied for more than 30 years, where she's watched the neighborhood grow more safe, as her Jewish neighbors multiplied.

"They're beautiful," she said.

But now this.

A monster is loose in Brooklyn. Ironically, Borough Park could be the only place in New York where you can find little girls - as I did yesterday - walking to the store, unsupervised, at ages 5 and 8. And no one thinks anything of it.

The 17-year-old looks young, and that seems to be why she was targeted. After she ran off screaming, she phoned her brother, who is 21. He called the cops. Later, he picked up their younger sister, 12, from school.

"Don't go out. Don't sit on the porch. Don't walk to the store," the little sister was told.

Late yesterday, the teen victim who got away came home with her brother. She looked shaken.

She did not want to talk about it.

She is safe.

Who will be next?

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B'KLYN PERV PANIC

By PATRICK GALLAHUE, ERIKA MARTINEZ and LUKAS I. ALPERT

May 6, 2006 -- The mood went meshuganah yesterday in the south Brooklyn area being terrorized by a pedophile prowler as two men in a car approached an 11-year-old boy, sending him screaming for help and setting off a massive police response.

The incident unfolded around 2 p.m. yesterday when two black men in a blue car approached an 11-year-old son of a prominent local rabbi carrying an unwieldy bundle of dry cleaning at East 4th Street and Avenue J in Midwood, police and neighbors said.

"Shalom, shalom, do you want a ride?" the men allegedly asked, according to the boy's older brother, who would not give his name.

Aware that a sicko was on the loose in neighboring Borough Park, the boy dropped his cleaning and ran screaming ran for help. The men in the car drove off.

Officers quickly stormed the block and surrounding area, police helicopters buzzed overhead and neighbors rushed out into the street.

A Post reporter driving a black jeep was stopped twice for questioning.

Two men in a car were later stopped at 60th Street and 20th Avenue and taken in for questioning but eventually let go.

Police quickly ruled out the incident as related to the string of abduction attempts by a man posing as a cop trying to lure young girls into his car but the tension in the heavily Hasidic area remained palpable.

"I do feel afraid. My daughter's school keeps warning her," said Esther Mermelstein of her 16-year-old daughter. "You don't want her to be a prisoner in the house, but I don't want her on the street."

It was the latest in a string of as many as five similar incidents in the area - at least three of which police believe were done by the same twisted fiend - that have left the close-knit community rattled.

On Thursday, a balding white man in a white Jeep Cherokee approached a 17-year-old girl, showed her a badge and tried to coax her into the car. The girl wisely ran for help.

The first sicko kiddie sex bid was on April 11, when a man, described as 20 to 25 years old with an olive complexion and dark hair, showed a card bearing a police insignia to an 11-year-old girl in Borough Park in a bid to get her into his dark-colored jeep.

Before she got in, he exposed himself to her, prompting her to run.

He struck again on April 25, this time in Elmhurst, Queens, and talked a 12-year-old girl into his car, where he molested her before letting her go.

On April 28, he struck twice within an hour on the same block in Borough Park. In the first instance, he approached a 10-year-old girl, who ran, but in the second instance, another girl, also 10, got in and he molested her.

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