By Joe Marino, Jennie Taer and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
Published Aug. 12, 2024
Updated Aug. 12, 2024, 12:48 p.m. ET
Two migrants were arrested for a knifepoint rape in Coney Island – including one who charged in a previous sexual assault case just four months after he illegally crossed into the US, law-enforcement sources said Monday.
Daniel Davon-Bonilla, 24, a Nicaraguan migrant, allegedly grabbed the 46-year-old woman and threw her to the ground before raping her while holding a knife to her throat at Surf Avenue and 16th Street around 9 p.m. Sunday, cops and the sources said.
Coney Island campsite strewn with white claw cans and drug paraphernalia.
His alleged accomplice, identified as Mexican migrant Leovando Moreno, 37, is accused of striking the woman’s 34-year-old boyfriend with a pipe when he tried to stop the vicious assault, the sources said.
The horrific attack took place outside a hotel housing asylum seekers — and along a poorly lit walkway between Surf Avenue and the boardwalk that leads to a space under the wooden walkway littered with drug paraphernalia and clans of White Claw, where migrants and homeless vagrants camp out.
Davon-Bonilla, who previously lived at a La Quinta Hotel on Third Avenue converted into a migrant shelter, was charged with first-degree rape, second-degree assault, first-degree sexual abuse, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon, the sources said. His arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court was pending Monday.
Sources in the US Department of Homeland Security said Davon-Bonilla entered the US illegally through Eagle Pass, Texas on Dec. 7, 2022 and was found by border agents sneaking through the thick brush.
He was taken into Border Patrol custody, and told agents at the time that he was going to live in Miami, giving them the address of a homeless shelter.
About four months later, he was accused of raping a 34-year-old woman at the La Quinta.
That victim was raped and sodomized inside the hotel on April 23, 2023. Bonilla was accused of pulling the woman’s hair and holding her down as he attacked her. He was charged criminal sexual act, unlawful imprisonment as a hate crime, sexual misconduct and sexual abuse, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.
Law enforcement sources said he spent several months in jail before taking a plea deal in that case — allowing him to be back on the street.It wasn’t clear why Bonilla was allowed to remain in the US after he was released from jail in that case.
US immigration officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sources laid the blame on New York’s sanctuary policies, saying they hamper US Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting dangerous criminals.
Sanctuary cities and states typically refuse to hold illegal migrants charged with crimes for federal immigration authorities to take them into custody and start deportation proceedings.
“When sanctuary cities and states don’t share immigration information or work well with ICE, ICE never gets an opportunity to actually do their job and remove subjects with criminal history while being here illegally,” one DHS source said.
Another DHS source pointed to the Biden Administration’s limiting “priorities” for immigration enforcement and “sanctuary cities not cooperating with ICE” as the reason for this latest crime.
“I have child molesters that I can’t arrest because they’re not a priority,” said the source.
The victim in the Sunday night attack is from out of state and appears to be homeless, living in an encampment under the boardwalk near where she was raped, according to law enforcement sources.
Bonilla allegedly confronted her and demanded sex before the attack, the sources said.
Moreno was charged with second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon in the Sunday night attack.
It is not immediately clear when Moreno entered the country.
The sources said the victim was taken to Coney Island Hospital, where she was listed in stable condition.
Her boyfriend refused medical attention at the scene, they said.
“It’s really sketchy,” a parks department worker said Monday about that area of the Coney Island boardwalk. “You do not want to walk down that alley at night. Hell no.”
The area is popular with vagrants because there are two public bathrooms conveniently nearby, the employee said.
“There’s not a lot of spots to get underneath that boardwalk, but any single one that’s opened up, they get in there,” he said. “If they get under there, they’re living under there.”
The Coney Island boardwalk is one of several spots across the Big Apple where migrants who have flooded into the five boroughs in recent years have set up shop.
Many, including those booted from city-funded shelters, have joined the ranks of Gotham’s homeless.
“It smells like pee and there are homeless men smoking drugs,” said mom Nicole Sideova, who was pushing her 11-month-old daughter in a stroller along the boardwalk on Monday afternoon.
“Dangerous people,” Sideova said. “It’s like a trap. Once you start walking down there there’s no way to escape.”
Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan, Amanda Woods and Desheania Andrews
