A longtime Brooklyn sex offender who’s been committing crime since the 1990s has been arrested for breaking into his elderly neighbor’s home and allegedly raping her.
The attack reportedly occurred around 1:00 am Tuesday morning after the unnamed victim, an 81-year-old woman, woke up and saw the suspect, Thomas Johnson, 50, in her living room.
“She said she recognized him immediately and asked what he was doing there. He didn’t say a word before the alleged attack,” according to local station WABC.
Johnson proceeded to choke and assault the victim so severely that he reportedly broke her jaw and foot, bloodied up her nose, left scars all across her body, and knocked her unconscious.
“He put my cheekbones out of place and when I got up I had no panties on. He knocked me out. I was out cold. I’m still spitting up blood. My eyes are red from the blood and everything,” the victim told WABC.
“And when I tried to go back into the bedroom to make a phone call I didn’t know he was still here. He attacked me a second time. And when he attacked me a second time again I was knocked out totally.”
Johnson was reportedly charged with assault, strangulation, and burglary later Tuesday. A rape charge is pending based on the results of a rape kit test that the victim underwent while at a nearby hospital.
Based on Johnson’s past record, the result of rape kit test will undoubtedly be positive. Indeed, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig, the guy’s a level 3 sex offender. That’s the highest level possible.
“A registered level 3 sex offender, the highest level, he has nine prior arrests,” Essig reportedly said as a press conference Wednesday.
His most recent arrest, aside from his arrest Tuesday, was in August of 2021 and involved a charge of strangulation. His oldest sex-related arrest meanwhile occurred in 2006, according to the New York Daily News.
“In August 2006, he was arrested for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl. The victim was a girl known to him, according to records. Johnson pled to misdemeanor sex abuse and spent a year behind bars, records show. He was busted for attempted murder in June 1995, said NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig, but pled to assault. Records indicate he spent three years in prison on that conviction,” the Daily News notes.
“Johnson also spent almost three years behind bars for a stolen property conviction, ending with his parole in November 1994, and two years in prison for attempted assault, ending with his conditional release in January 2006. His longest sentence was for an assault conviction in 2007. He was sentenced to seven years, though he served time beyond that and was released in August 2018.”
“He took the youngest who couldn’t defend herself, and he took the oldest who couldn’t defend herself,” his latest victim, the elderly woman, said to the Daily News, referencing his 2006 arrest.
Essig concurred, reportedly saying at Wednesday’s presser that Johnson has committed a “pretty despicable crime against the kid and the woman.”
What’s strange is that Johnson had previously been nice to the victim by reportedly helping her with groceries and opening the building’s gate for her.
“He would always open the gate for me. He paid special attention. I had two knee replacements and he always helped me. That man is sick,” she told the Daily News.
Which raises the question of why he’d been free in the first place.
Regarding his August 2021 arrest, the New York Post notes, “The District Attorney’s office asked for $50,000 bail after his arrest … but Johnson was released on supervision. Then, after he was indicted, the victim didn’t want to move forward with the case, a law enforcement source said. An order of protection was issued for the victim, who was a family member.”
The fact that he was initially “released on supervision” suggests he was assigned to one of New York City’s many lax-on-crime judges.
Serial thief with 168 arrests given bail by Manhattan judge; NYPD jokes about ‘frequent flier miles’ https://t.co/DkoUnuyLEa pic.twitter.com/NIkj2CJNi3
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) February 16, 2022
As previously reported, NYC judges have a track record of either automatically releasing suspects like Johnson or setting their bail at easily affordable levels.
Some of this is the result of New York State’s widely panned bail reform laws. Laws that were passed partly on behalf of thugs like Pedro Hernandez, 22.
“When he was a teenager, Hernandez became the focus of criminal justice activists’ push for bail reform after he spent a year in jail because he couldn’t post bail in a 2015 shooting case. Hernandez maintained his innocence and refused a plea deal that would have released him from lockup in Rikers,” according to local station WPIX.
Now fast-forward to Monday, when the poster child for bail reform was arrested for attempted murder …
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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