A Manhattan jury has convicted a man accused of trying to rape a woman while she was sunbathing in Central Park.
Prosecutors said Jermaine Longmire, 45, exposed himself to a 21-year-old woman who was catching some rays in the Great Hills section of Central Park near West Drive and W.104th Street on June 24, 2024.
The woman screamed and tried to run, but Longmire tackled her from behind, pinned her down and tried to rape her, according to trial testimony. The victim fought him off, and he fled along West Drive.
“A jury of his peers convicted Longmire for this brutal and terrifying attack,” Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg said in a statement about the afternoon attack.
“New Yorkers and tourists alike deserve to enjoy New York’s parks without fearing for their safety. I thank the survivor for courageously recounting the assault and our skilled prosecutors for securing an all-count conviction in this case.”
Longmire was convicted of attempted rape and sexual abuse.
NYPD officers are pictured at the scene of an attempted rape in the Great Hill section of Central Park near W. 104th St. and West Drive. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News)
Cops said that, after Longmire fled, he swapped shirts and put on a hat in an attempt to change his appearance.
The victim suffered injuries throughout her body during the attack, police said.
Three days after the Central Park attack, detectives with the Manhattan Special Victims squad arrested Longmire for a similar attack on June 15 where he allegedly reached under a 27-year-old woman’s dress and grabbed her buttocks. on a Brooklyn-bound A train platform.
Longmire was charged with forcible touching and sexual abuse in that case and was being held on bail on Rikers Island when cops inked him to the Central Park attack.
Prosecutors said Longmire’s DNA was found on the Central Park victim’s bikini bottom.
Investigators also used facial recognition technology to link him to the assault, officials said.
Jermaine Longmire, accused of a sex attack in Central Park, is arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday, July 3, 2024. (Curtis Means / Daily Mail / Pool)
Longmire had been living in an uptown Manhattan homeless shelter and has numerous prior arrests across the country, prosecutors said.
He served more than two years in an upstate New York prison for attempted burglary and was released in 2005, records show.