Metro

Rape nightmare in Central Park

An elderly woman out birdwatching in one of the safest areas of Central Park was raped, beaten and robbed in broad daylight yesterday by a pervert whom she had recently caught masturbating.

“Do you remember me?” the creep taunted his victim before he pounced on her near Strawberry Fields off West 74th Street at about 11:45 a.m.

He bashed the 73-year-old Upper West Sider on the head and punched her, sending the petite victim crumbling to the ground.

After the rape, he stole her camera and backpack.

He ordered her to stay where she was and ran off.

“She said she had to count to 100 before getting up,” said NYU Professor Eric Ozawa, 34, another birdwatcher who spotted the victim lying face down with her limp legs blocking a walking path.

Cops last night picked up a suspect for questioning in the rape and a previous attack in the park, law-enforcement sources said.

The victim is an avid photographer and birdwatcher who visits the park daily, and on Sept. 2 she had her first ugly encounter with the fiend on a path in the park’s heavily wooded Ramble.

She photographed him pleasuring himself, and he became furious.

He demanded that she erase the photo from her camera.

When she refused, he tried to grab it, but the plucky woman successfully resisted.

The sources said she later uploaded the photo to her computer but then deleted it — and investigators yesterday were trying to recover the image off the hard drive.

Police said they have a witness to the crime.

Ozawa said the woman was coherent when he found her.

“I came over, and she said she had been raped and someone had taken her camera,” he said.

The victim’s face was swollen and her right eye was badly bruised. There were pieces of mulch on her face.

Ozawa called 911 and stayed with the victim until police arrived. She was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, where she was listed in serious condition, the sources said.

Ozawa seemed surprised at how well she was doing.

“She was remarkably lucid for what had just happened,” Ozawa said. “She’s a small woman who seemed to have herself together in a situation in which most people wouldn’t.”

The victim told Ozawa that her wallet was inside the backpack.

It wasn’t clear if the stolen camera was the one she had used to photograph the sicko in the earlier confrontation. Cops said she did not report that incident.

The attacker was described as in his 40s, clean cut with short hair, a stocky build and what the victim believed was a Russian or Ukrainian accent, the sources said.

Strawberry Fields is on the west fringe of Central Park from 71st to 74th Streets. It was created as a memorial to John Lennon, who in 1980 was slain at the nearby Dakota apartment building, where he lived with Yoko Ono.

Parkgoers yesterday were in shock at the heinous crime.

“It’s full of people all the time. It’s pretty amazing that someone had the gall to do it in the middle of the day,” said Sharyn Lilly, 52, of Perth, Australia.

Additional reporting by Kirstan Conley and Larry Celona