'It's him': Cops say DNA links man to girl's rape

There's only a one in sextillion chance that Jose Carrasquillo isn't the man who raped the 11-year-old girl on June 1, said Joseph Szarka of the police forensics lab.

"If you had that many people [1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000] in the world, he'd be the only person that'd match," Szarka said yesterday after a news conference at the Police Forensics Science Bureau, at 8th and Poplar streets.

Authorities announced that Carrasquillo, 26, will be charged today in the girl's rape in a Kensington backyard after his DNA was positively linked to DNA found in the girl's underwear.

Forensic evidence collected by a rape kit and swabs taken from Carrasqillo indisputably match, said Szarka.

"It's him," he said of the rape suspect.

Carrasquillo was named a person of interest soon after the attack. Police allege that he approached the little girl on June 1 on Kensington Avenue near Orleans Street while she was walking to school. He allegedly threatened to shoot her and forced her to walk with him to the backyard, where, police said, he attacked her so severely that she required surgery.

The fifth-grader from Russell Conwell Middle School is at home recovering.

The next day, Carrasquillo was treated at Temple University Hospital for numerous head wounds after being beaten by a justice-seeking Kensington mob who held him there until police arrived.

Carrasquillo also is expected to face felony charges of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, aggravated assault, contact with a minor and unlawful restraint, police said.

Authorities said they also are charging him with indecent assault in another incident that occurred on the day of the girl's rape.

Just an hour before he allegedly approached the 11-year-old, he groped a teenage student who was on her way to Kensington High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, at Cumberland and Coral streets, police said. At the school, about a mile from where the 11-year-old was approached, the teen saw Carrasquillo in the cafeteria eating breakfast. He fled when she identified him as her attacker, police said.

Authorities also plan to investigate Carrasquillo's possible involvement in two other cases, said Capt. John Darby of the special-victims unit.

Carrasquillo is under protective custody in a city prison, where he is being held on a parole violation for a drug conviction, police said.

"We're glad he's off the street," Darby said. *