Metro

Man arrested in Central Park attack on 73-year-old woman

Cops nabbed a suspect in the brutal rape of an elderly woman in Central Park.

David Albert Mitchell, 42, was arrested for the vicious daylight assault yesterday, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

Mitchell was charged with first-degree rape, committing a predatory sex act, committing a criminal sex act, robbery, assault and criminal possession of stolen property.

The victim picked Mitchell out of a lineup earlier Thursday.

Police walked Mitchell from the Special Victims Squad on 124th St.

The sicko, who has a lengthy rap sheet, was nabbed after three rookie cops recognized him from surveillance footage on Amsterdam and W. 77th Street, cops said.

Mitchell, a transient with no address in New York, had allegedly confronted the woman because she had taken pictures of him masturbating 10 days before the assault.

Cops recovered the picture of him from her computer’s hard drive, cops said. Some of the victim’s memory cards were found on him.

This isn’t his first brush with the law.

Mitchell was previously charged with sex assault and first degree murder in West Virginia, but he was acquitted during trial in 1989.

He served 8 years in prison after being convicted in 2003 in Virginia of abduction and kidnapping.

Cops first brought in Mitchell for questioning last night, and he was initially arrested for menacing Ayrton DoSantos, a park regular known as the “Mayor of Strawberry Fields”, on Aug. 20, sources said.

“I didn’t want to smoke a doobie with this guy and he got pissed off,” DoSantos said. “He said he wanted to go mano a mano. I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him and to stay away from me.

“Ten minutes later he comes back with a knife and says, ‘I got no problem plugging you right here in front of all these people and filling this circle with blood.”

Additional reporting by Kathryn Cusma