Witness tells court how she avoided possible attack from accused EMT

A witness in the case against a decorated EMT accused of serial rape displayed New York street sense as she described in Brooklyn Criminal Court how she avoided attack. Melissa Edwards testified about the May 22, 2009, incident at 249 E. 37 St. in East Flatbush as suspect Angus Pascall looked down at the table.

"I first saw him pacing back and forth in front of our building," she testified. "I never saw him before. When I got to the door he came up right next to me and said, ''Scuse me, sexy.'

“He got ahead of me going through the door, and it was strange because he was able to push it open without a key. I smelled alcohol on his breath. I just stopped and pretended to call my mother. I stood in the lobby for five minutes and he went up the stairs."

Earlier, her husband, Dayne Edwards told the jury of 10 women and two men in Judge Mark Dwyer’s courtroom that he had come home from church that day and found the elevator was taking “extra long.” Edwards said the stairwell door opened and a tall, husky man in a brown shirt, smelling of alcohol, come out with an unsteady gait and left the building.

When the elevator door opened, he saw his 19-year-old neighbor bleeding from the hand and cowering in the corner. "She was in shock," Edwards said.

She said a burly man in a brown shirt had forced her to perform oral sex on him at knifepoint. Edwards ran out to grab him, but he was gone. After helping the teen, Edwards hurried to his apartment and heard of his own wife's encounter with the inebriated man in a brown shirt.

Prosecutor Olatokunbo Olaniyan says DNA evidence links Pascall to the assault on the 19-year-old and four other attacks, including one on an 11-year-old.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/witness-tells-encounter-accused-rapist-article-1.1239871#ixzz2I0pA5h9w