A homeless man nabbed by eagle-eyed street cops was arrested Thursday for the rape of a 73-year-old birdwatcher in Central Park, police said.
The elderly woman picked David Albert Mitchell, 42, out of a lineup. Charges were pending.
Mitchell was already wanted for an Aug. 20 incident in Strawberry Fields in which he threatened a man with a knife during a senseless argument, sources said.
He was grabbed at 7:20 p.m. Wednesday near 77th St. and Amsterdam Ave. by two police officers who recognized him from surveillance video made public after the rape.
Mitchell has a rap sheet from West Virginia, where parole officials say he spent a decade in prison after being convicted of first-degree robbery and acquitted of murder.
After his release, he was convicted of grand larceny and went back into jail for a year. Details of those cases were unavailable.
It’s unclear if he’s been arrested since or how long he has been in New York.
His elderly victim told police her attacker was a man she inadvertently photographed a week earlier while he was masturbating in a section of the park called The Ramble.
“What are you doing?” the suspect had demanded when he saw her camera, she told police. “Give me that.”
The woman said he insisted she delete the image and then let her go. She didn't report the initial encounter to police.
Then, on Wednesday morning, while she was trying out a new camera lens, the man pounced on her and began pummeling her, police said.
He dragged her into the brush and brutalized her, then made off with her backpack, wallet and camera.
She was found lying on the ground around 11:30 a.m. by another birdwatcher, Eric Ozawa.
“I talked to her, she said she'd been raped,” said Ozawa, a New York University writing professor. “Her face was swollen. Her right eye was badly bruised. Her forehead was swollen."
Ozawa said the victim was covered with mulch.
“She was a small woman in her 70s,” he said.
Police snagged surveillance photos of the alleged attacker leaving the park carrying what appears to be the victim’s backpack.
It was the first rape in the park this year, and there were only two in the park last year — statistics Mayor Bloomberg seized on when asked about the crime.
