A 24-year-old livery driver charged with the latest of a series of four Brooklyn sex attacks was arraigned today in front of his distraught fiancee — on what was supposed to be their happy wedding day.
But instead of getting hitched, William Giraldo just got held — on $200,000 bail that is, for charges related to last Saturday’s rape of a 28-year-old woman in Sunset Park.
Giraldo denies committing that attack — and also claims he has an alibi, sources said after the Bensonhurst resident’s arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Giraldo’s dramatically delayed — at the very least — nuptials came as The Post revealed that the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating whether police botched their handling of the first in the series of sex assault.
Sources and residents of the Park Slope street where that March 20 attack occurred described multiple missteps by police on the heels of the attack — including cops outright refusing to watch a home surveillance video of the attack, prematurely closing the case, and failing to obtain that shocking video footage until after it was revealed by news outlets.
Giraldo told cops he is a livery driver who was working Saturday morning when he parked his white Mercury Grand Marquee at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Sunset Park at about 2:45 a.m, sources said. He said he went inside — where the victim also was arriving on foot from a friend’s house to purchase some food on her way home, according to sources.
Giraldo “made a suggestive remark” to the victim inside the donut shot, sources said.
The victim then left, and began walking home.
When she arrived at her building, she entered through the vestibule door, and was reaching for the door to the main lobby when a man grabbed her neck from behind, began choking her, and pushed her to the floor, source said. The man then pulled off her underwear, pulled down her pants and raped her, sources said.
The fiend then grabbed the victim’s purse from the floor, and fled the scene. She called 911 and was taken to Coney Island Hospital.
Sources said Giraldo’s Mercury was spotted on surveillance video near the victim’s residence at the time of the rape.
The rape was the latest, and most serious, in a string of four sex attacks that began on March 20 in Park Slope, which police suspected were being committed by the same perp.
On Monday, cops released surveillance video from the Dunkin’ Donuts showing a man they said was wanted in connection with Saturday’s rape, and with the other three attacks on women in their 20s or 30s — all of which were attempted rapes.
Giraldo surrendered early yesterday morning at the 66th Pct., identifying himself as the man on the video — but denying he committed any of the attacks.,
All four victims viewed him in line-ups at the Brooklyn Special Victims Unit — but he was ID’ed only by Saturday’s rape victim.
In that case, he has been charged with rape burglary, robbery, sex abuse, assault, criminal obstructing of breathing and blood circulation, and sexual misconduct.
He has not been charged in the three attempts rapes on May 29, May 3 and March 20 — the last of which has sparked the Internal Affairs probe of how cops handled, or mishandled, their investigation.
In that incident, a brute grabbed a woman on 16th Street in Park Slope — but she desperately fought him off as she screamed for help before breaking free and fleeing.
The attacked also fled as neighbors ran out of their homes, among them a resident named “Ray” whose home surveillance camera captured the shocking attack.
Cops arrived and drove around the area, unsuccessfully looking for the assailant and the victim.
“Ray was telling the police, ‘I have the tape, I have the tape,’ ” said neighbor Donald Harrington. But cops said “they weren’t interested,” Harrington added.
Law-enforcement sources who confirmed the IAB probe said the cops who responded notified 911 that the March 20 call was “unfounded” after being unable to locate the woman.
Hours later, the victim called cops, sources said.
About 10 days later, the woman called to inquire about the case — and police realized it had been improperly marked as closed, sources said.
After that, a female detective interviewed the woman, who told her it was a sex assault, the source said. Weeks later, the cops finally obtained the video, but only after it was described in news accounts, residents said.
Additional reporting by Lisa Riordan Seville and Daniel Gold