The man accused of raping an elderly woman in New York’s Central Park frightened people for years in his tiny West Virginia hometown, where a neighbor says residents were so terrified after his release from prison last year they bought guns to protect themselves.
Authorities say David Albert Mitchell has been in and out of prison since he was 18. He was arrested twice on charges of raping elderly women, suspected but not charged in the slaying of one female neighbor and acquitted of killing another. Court records and prosecutors describe a man who drank heavily, was quick to threaten violence, never earned a high school diploma and might have been mentally ill.
Mitchell, 42, served eight years in a Virginia prison for the 2003 abduction of an ex-girlfriend and got out last year. Records show he violated probation three times, then apparently fled to New York, where police say he attacked a 73-year-old birdwatcher in Central Park near a memorial to peace-loving John Lennon.
In Jenkinjones, W.Va., a hard-luck coalfields town of fewer than 300, a man well-acquainted with both Mitchell and some of his alleged victims said it’s best if New York locks him up for good. He said when word spread of Mitchell’s release from prison last year, people bought guns for protection because he had terrorized people in the town and preyed on elderly women for years.
“They ain’t gonna trust him down here again. They’re gonna end up killing him,” said 45-year-old Wayne Mitchell, no relation to the suspect. “To be honest with you, he needs to be put away for life.”
Jenkinjones is an isolated, unincorporated town in McDowell County, an economically desperate part of the struggling West Virginia coalfields. More than a third of the population lives in poverty.
People have been fleeing McDowell for decades as the once-thriving coal industry died, and the population plummeted nearly 19 percent in the past decade. Drug abuse is rampant, schools and students are struggling, and it has historically been ranked among the nation’s unhealthiest counties.
It’s also just miles from the Virginia line, a location that helped Mitchell build a criminal resume in both states.
Police in New York there say he raped a birdwatcher who told police that she had taken a photo of Mitchell fondling himself days before the attack. She said Mitchell tried to take the camera away from her and demanded she delete the image. Then, on Wednesday, he attacked her in a wooded area near the busy Strawberry Fields section of Central Park, she told investigators.
Mitchell was also charged with threatening a man with a knife last month in the same area of the park.
Mitchell was arraigned Friday on charges of first-degree rape, robbery, assault and other charges, and ordered held without bail. A call to his attorney at arraignment was not returned. Mitchell said nothing as he was led from the special victims unit to face charges in court Friday, but he spat at reporters gathered there.
