Hours after allegedly bashing in Diana Agudelo’s skull during a chance encounter on Randall’s Island, ex-con Miguel Jiraud tried to paint himself as a good Samaritan who did the right thing and called 911 after innocently finding his victim’s broken body near a bike path.
But his court-ordered GPS ankle monitor — a stark, uncomfortable reminder of his past crimes — exposed his lie, cops and prosecutors said Saturday.
The ankle monitor put the 30-year-old parolee right at the spot where Agudelo, 44, was found at the exact time police believe she was attacked on May 16, cops said.
An illuminated headlamp on Agudelo’s cherished black and blue e-bike also flashed a light on Jiraud’s alleged crime, catching an NYPD detective’s eye as he reviewed hours of dark surveillance footage near the spot where the bloody assault took place.
“I observed an individual on the shoreline throwing what appears to be a large object with an illuminated headlight into the river,” Detective Anthony Ippolito wrote as he outlined his case against Jiraud in court papers. “I then observed the individual leave the shoreline and walk towards 64 Sunken Garden Loop, which is a shelter located on Wards Island.”
Jiraud is a resident of the shelter. Reviewing surveillance footage inside and outside the building, Det. Ippolito saw Jiraud wearing a beige sweater with the word “ESSENTIALS” on the front, wet, light-colored jeans, and wet Timberland boots.
Detectives noted that his hands appeared to be cut and bloody.
He entered the shelter at 11:51 p.m., just 20 minutes after Agudelo rolled onto Randall’s Island and 15 minutes after her e-bike was thrown into the East River, prosecutors said. Police say he called 911 about six hours after Agudelo was attacked to report a woman was lying near a bike path.
Despite all the mounting evidence against him, Jiraud proclaimed his innocence as he was taken to court Friday, where he was ordered held without bail on attempted murder charges.
“I did nothing wrong! I found her!” Jiraud screamed to reporters as he was put into a squad car outside the 25th Precinct stationhouse in Harlem. “I’ve done nothing wrong since I’ve been out. Not a violation, not jumping the turnstiles! Nothing!”
Agudelo’s daughter Stephanie Rosas was left stunned by Jiraud’s defiance.
“I think he’s very inhumane,” she told the Daily News. “I think the things [Jiraud is saying] is ridiculous, because if he really is innocent, then why did someone tell me about his ankle monitor and that it was showing the location, that he was there at the time that it happened?”
Bloody encounter in Randall’s Island “dead zone”
The night Agudelo was attacked appeared pretty routine — at least at first.
Through interviews with co-workers and recovered surveillance footage, detectives determined she left her job at the Museum of the City of New York on Fifth Ave. at E. 103rd St. on her TotGuard e-bike at 11:23 p.m. on May 16. At the time, Agudelo was wearing a pink sweatshirt, black pants, shoes, and carried a light blue backpack, cops said.
Cops tracked her from the museum to the 103rd St. footbridge, which took her to Wards Island on the southern tip of Randall’s Island. It was 11:31 p.m.
She was expected to ride around the southern tip and take the RFK Bridge into Queens, which would put her just a few blocks from her Astoria apartment, but she vanished after riding into a dead zone a few hundred yards from the bridge where there are no surveillance cameras.
Cops weren’t alerted to the attack until about 5:15 a.m. the next morning when Agudelo’s battered, bloody body was found sprawled out on an outcropping of rocks “in a grassy area just north of the 103rd Street footbridge,” cops said in court papers.
The 911 call came from Jiraud, who gave the dispatcher a fake name “because he was on parole and concerned with police contact,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Edward Smith said at the ex-con’s arraignment Friday night.
Jiraud claimed he was on his way to work at another Wards Island shelter around dawn when he found Agudelo’s body. One of her black Skechers sneakers was found in a trash can near the scene, cops told the family.
About six hours after she was attacked, EMS rushed Agudelo to Elmhurst hospital. Her chance of recovery was grim, Smith said.
“The victim is not expected to survive and has already undergone multiple brain surgeries and remains unconscious in a coma,” he said at court. Agudelo also had deep cuts and abrasions on her back and a “penetrating wound to her left temple,” according to court records.
Rodas, 21, has kept a constant vigil by her unresponsive mother’s bedside. But there was one point where she believed her mother tried to reach out to her.
“She was tearing up with me because I was crying,” Rodas recalled. “It was before her surgery. I think a few hours before. And I was just begging her, ‘Please don’t go, please don’t go.’ Like I still am waiting for her.
“I told her, ‘I’ll be waiting here for you,’ and that she better come back,” she said. “And then I saw her tearing. I saw one tear.”
Agudelo’s family has been left shattered by the attack. In Colombia, the victim’s mother had a heart attack and had to be hospitalized when she heard the news, Rodas said.
As a Saturday, more than $52,000 has been raised for Agudelo’s medical care through a GoFundMe post. The money will help — and remind the wounded family that there are actual good Samaritans in this world. Not just predators in disguise.
Data-driven investigation still has unanswered questions
Detectives were able to track the 911 call to Jiraud, who had spent nine years in prison for rape in the Bronx in 2013 when he was 16. When he was paroled in September, he was ordered to wear an ankle monitor that tracked his movements.
After discovering the footage of someone throwing the e-bike into the river near where Agudelo was attacked, cops sent divers into the water on May 20 and found the single mom’s e-bike “approximately seven feet from the shoreline.”
Jiraud’s GPS monitor filled in the rest of the blanks, the detective noted.
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“At approximately 11:32 PM, the defendant’s GPS ankle monitor places him just north of the 103rd Street footbridge in the area where the victim’s body was found,” Ippolito wrote in the complaint against Jiraud. “Thereafter, the defendant’s GPS ankle monitor shows him traveling towards the shoreline where the victim’s e-bike was recovered. As the defendant is moving from the north to the south, between 11:32 PM to 11:36 PM, the defendant appears to be traveling at varying speeds, up to 16 MPH.”
Police believe Jiraud rode the e-bike to the spot where he threw it into the water. He then was caught on camera walking back to his shelter.
But while detectives have a solid case against Jiraud teeming with GPS data and surveillance footage, it’s not clear why he attacked Agudelo, police admitted.
At Jiraud’s arraignment, Smith noted that the ex-con was just released from prison eight months ago. After being convicted, he was also accused of “promoting prison contraband while incarcerated,” he said.
“Clearly, he has already demonstrated that he cannot abide by any terms of release,” Smith explained.
A history of violence
Jiraud has been on the state’s sex offender registry ever since his rape conviction.
In that case, he was accused of raping, beating and choking a 28-year-old woman inside a Courtlandt Ave. apartment building near E. 165th St. in the Melrose section of the Bronx on Feb. 23, 2011.
“Don’t scream, I swear I’ll shoot you, you white b—h,” the 16-year-old suspect screamed at his victim as he choked her into unconsciousness, prosecutors said at the time.
Jiraud took the woman up to the roof where he raped and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors said.
“Don’t fight it or I will kill you,” he said as he threatened to throw her off the roof, according to court papers. “You’re the third one I’ve had.”
He also said he was about to jump on a plane at JFK.
“You’ll never see me again,” he said.
After his arrest, he admitted that he followed his victim for one block before grabbing her in the elevator.
“I pulled her pants down and began to rape her,” he confessed. “I seriously injured her.”
Jiraud’s family said the parolee was trying to cobble his life back together as he eked out a living on Randall’s Island. The ex-con told them that he had found Agudelo and was “cooperating with police,” but didn’t believe he was responsible for the attack.
“He’s been doing so good,” the suspect’s older brother, Luis Jiraud, told The News. “He works there, lives there. [He] reported this. I think they’re going by his history. He ain’t going to be stupid.”
Jiraud’s niece believes detectives pinned the attack on him solely on his prior criminal record.
“It happens all the time,” Doris Jiraud said. “Even the people from the shelter are also saying they don’t believe [the charges].
“He’s doing so good,” she said about her uncle. “He got employment really fast. He got in all his paperwork that he needed. His parole officer was happy for him. He’s been viewing apartments to get housed. So I don’t understand.”
