A good — but badly battered — Samaritan has a fractured cheekbone, several loose teeth and seven staples in his head after helping to nab a rape suspect on the Coney Island beach.
“She said, ‘That’s him! That’s him!’ ” the bludgeoned hero recounted Saturday of seeing the sobbing victim stumbling away from a lifeguard stand.
“Her pants were ripped and her underwear was sticking out, and she was screaming, ‘Help me!’ ” recalled the Brooklyn dad, who asked not to be named.
The 23-year-old woman had met accused rapist Yariel Delacruz, 20, on Facebook and had been watching the fireworks on a first date Friday night before the alleged rape, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
Afterward, “he was still on the beach, coming toward her,” recalled the good Samaritan. “I went to him with my hands up, and I said, ‘What happened, bro? What did you do to that woman?’
“He kept saying, ‘I didn’t do it’ … then he looked scared and started to run. I held on to him,” the hero remembered.
“I was trying to hold him but I’m not a young man anymore. He took off his belt, wrapped it around his wrist gangster style. The buckle was hanging a few inches off the belt. He got me on the cheek, then used it as a whip. He got a shot to my head, and then he started running.”
Delacruz was quickly arrested, and was charged by police with rape, assault, criminal obstruction of breathing, robbery — for allegedly stealing the woman’s phone and cigarettes — and weapons possession for the belt buckle.