Flood of tips from locals helped nab Ecuadorian migrant arrested in rape of 13-year-old NYC girl: ‘They knew who he was’

An Ecuadorian migrant was busted Tuesday in the rape of a 13-year-old girl in a secluded part of a vast Queens park last week – thanks to a flood of tips from local community members and Good Samaritans who dramatically subdued the suspect.

A handcuffed Christian Geovanny Inga-Landi, 25, was met with jeers as he was walked by cops from a Forest Hills NYPD precinct Tuesday afternoon on his way to be arraigned on a slew of felonies, including rape and kidnapping.

“Piece of s–t!” one onlooker shouted.

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Tips – including those about a distinctive boar tattoo on the suspect’s chest – helped cops tie Inga-Landi to the sickening, broad-daylight June 13 attack inside Kissena Park in which a girl and boy, both 13, were held at knifepoint with a “machete-style” blade and had their hands tied with shoelaces, police said. The fiend raped the girl before running off with the kids’ phones, cops said.

“We are confident the person who committed this terrible crime is now in custody,” said NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban during a news conference.

The bust came after a tense five days that left nearby residents waiting on edge as the NYPD successively released a sketch, photos and videos depicting the suspect — and CrimeStoppers offered a $10,000 reward.

The outreach worked: locals responded by providing Inga-Landi’s name, his Facebook account and pictures that matched his distinctive tattoo, as well as clothing the suspect wore during the sexual assault, said Joseph Kenny, the NYPD’s chief of detectives.

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“One of the tips we actually received was from a landlord who stated the male had come to his building about two weeks previous trying to rent the room,” he said.

Inga-Landi entered the US with his 3-year-old son in 2021 through Eagle Pass, Texas, where Customs and Border Patrol agents took him into custody for entering the country illegally, Kenny and police sources said.

He told officials he was going to live in a Flushing apartment, but a worker at the building told The Post Tuesday that the migrant only lived there for about a week in July 2021.

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While an immigration judge in 2022 ordered Inga-Landi to leave the US, he appears to have stayed in New York City, likely as he received some sort of relief or appeal. Late that year, Inga-Landi received an open container summons in Queens.

Transit cops gave Inga-Landi another summons, this time for fare evasion, in March 2023, sources said. A couple months later, he received a trespassing ticket – and gave his address as a location on Atlantic Avenue, according to sources.

Inga-Landi’s last run-in with cops came in January, when police responded to a custody argument between him and a woman in Flushing after he dropped off their children, sources said.

Kenny said Inga-Landi had no criminal history in the city before his arrest early Tuesday.

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The flood of tips culminated with a 911 call Tuesday about 1 a.m. from community members saying they found the rape suspect – Inga-Landi – at 108th Street and Waldron Street, Kenny said.

“Here we found the community was holding our perp,” Kenny said. “He fought with them but the community still managed to hold on to him until we got there.”

Good Samaritans swarmed the suspect, pounded him and tied him up with a belt until cops showed up, they said.

“I waited the whole day to see if he would come,” local hero Jeffrey Flores told The Post. “He came at night.

“Once we noticed it was him, everyone just was going crazy on him,” said Angela Sauretti, who called 911 as her brother tackled the suspect.

“It don’t matter who we are or what we do, we all come together and work as a team to take the perpetrator off the street because he’s a rapist.”

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Inga-Landi was treated for minor injuries at Elmhurst Hospital before he was taken to the 112th Precinct stationhouse, where special victims unit investigators were processing him, Kenny said.

“The perpetrator has made statements after waiving Miranda Rights, where he indicated he has a drug problem, that he found the knife he used to threaten the two teens, that this was the first time he’d ever done anything like this,” Kenny said. “He IDs himself in video that was shown to him.”

Fingerprints on two phones stolen from the teens were linked back to Inga-Landi, sources said.

Inga-Landi was awaiting arraignment on charges of rape, kidnapping, sex abuse, robbery, menacing, unlawful imprisonment, acting in a manner injurious to a child and criminal possession of a weapon.

Several enraged community members gathered behind barricades to hurl obscenities at Inga-Landi as he was carted from the precinct on his way to Queens Criminal Court.

Olynda Delgado, 31, said she abruptly left her Forest Hills hairstyling job to catch a glimpse of the alleged creep, and shout at him.

“He’s a monster, he deserves to be put under the jail,” she said.

Additional reporting by Tina Moore and David Propper