Cops say they have arrested the South Slope Sex Fiend — well, at least one of them — as they nabbed a man suspected of an attempted rape in Sunset Park on Monday night, the most-recent of at least 13 attacks since March.
Police arrested Adolfo Martinez, 26, on Tuesday night near 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue — then spent the better part of Wednesday figuring out whether he committed any or all of the prior attacks that have kept a large area from the South Slope to Sunset Park on edge for months.
Police sources say that Martinez admitted to following a woman leaving the 36th Street station at Fourth Avenue on Monday at 7:45 pm, when he allegedly grabbed her buttocks and whispered, “Adios, Mami,” before fleeing. The woman chased after him, but he got away near 41st Street.
“There may be one or two that he’s responsible for,” a police source said. “We know that he wasn’t responsible for some of them, like the one on 16th Street [that was caught on video]. The guy in that attack was a lot heavier.”
Shortly after his arrest, investigators put Martinez through a score of lineups to see if he could be linked to any of the other attacks.
Cops say he’s a serial sex abuser: Martinez was arrested in 2007 for grabbing a woman’s buttocks on Chrystie and Grand streets in Manhattan. Back then, police charged Martinez with forcible touching and sent him home, but the 26-year-old never returned to court.
Martinez fits the description of the fiend: He is short, Hispanic and in his 20s. A warrant for his arrest was still in effect when cops caught up with him on Tuesday.
But then again, who knows — after all, police have released five sketches of the possible assailant, who tends to sneak up on women from behind and grope them before running off when they scream.
Of the 13 known attacks, one resulted in a rape.
Terror had once again filled Windsor Terrace earlier this week after the South Slope Sex Fiend groped a 20-year-old woman near 19th and Vanderbilt streets on Sunday at 11:30 pm. She screamed and the fiend fled toward E. Third Street.
Hours later, dozens of cops canvassed the neighborhood and others fanned out around Prospect Avenue, the original center of the now-swelling attack zone. But just hours later, Martinez groped the woman in Sunset Park, cops said.
That incident brought out radio personality Curtis Silwa and his band of Guardian Angels to Sunset Park on Tuesday, handing out safety tips to women and warning them of the serial attacks.
“These sexual assaulters are eyeballing women coming off the subway — now we’re seizing those areas,” Silwa said. “Nobody is going to want to hang around if we’re hanging around. Whatever women do, they’ve got to stay focused because this is an area where they’re being preyed on.”
Locals have been frustrated with the police response to the crime wave, which has included victims in South Slope, Greenwood Heights, Park Slope, Bay Ridge and now Windsor Terrace.
Since late August, fear has prompted residents to hold rallies in the streets, organize self-defense classes, and even provide women with a buddy system when they walk home.
Police originally sought only one South Slope sicko following the first incident on March 20, where the suspect pounced on a 24-year-old woman at 11:30 pm.
Following a series of attempted rapes over the summer, there are now five sketches hanging in area storefronts — scary images that residents say reveals little but police ineffectiveness.
But for many, the recent arrest has done little to quell community fears.
“It’s great that police caught a guy,” said Aaron Brashear of Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights. “But we’ve had 13 attacks, and cops only made an arrest for one of them. There’s still other men out there.”
— with Thomas Tracy
Anyone with information on the South Slope rapists is asked to call Brooklyn Special Victims Squad at (718) 230-4415, not Crime Stoppers.
