"From this block to the first building, they surrounded from the boardwalk all the way around. We didn't know what was going on. And we found out after they left, that somebody was raped," resident Junior Lugo said.
Witnesses described a massive foot chase through Coney Island Houses Tuesday night for two suspected teenage rapists.
"Lots of cops stopped me, thinking it was me," Mike James Smith said.
The chain of events started with a robbery on the near West 27th and the boardwalk on Monday night.
Police say an 18-year-old girl was walking home from a party around 11:00 p.m. when she was approached by two teenage boys with a gun.
According to investigators, they made her empty her pockets, stole her Blackberry and an i-Pod, and then forced her off the boardwalk where both the 14 and 15 year old raped her.
"The world is changing when you have to worry about little boys now," Monique Mans said.
"It's kinda scary because I have my mom, nephews and nieces here. So if that happened to a young lady on the boardwalk, it could happen to anybody," Lugo said.
But perhaps not anybody would do what this rape victim did next. Investigators say she secretly followed them home so should she could later identify them to police. Once she found out they lived in a nearby housing development on West 29th, she then went to the hospital and called 911.
"For these little kids to be doing that, and they're 14 and 15. She probably felt violated like, I'm gonna go get them. That's good. I'm glad she did that because they would have gotten away," Amanda Tirado said.
"Usually they come around, they ride their bikes. They play basketball. I don't know them for what they are accused for," James Terry said.
Police returned Tuesday to make the arrests. Tirado watched the suspects run from building to building before they were caught.
"The guy was running in the building, and so many cops were after him. And a father was doing tenant patrol and he saw them running. After him, the detective came and just stopped them," she said.
