MIAMI — Miami police say a group of boys took a 12-year-old girl to a community garden in the city’s Overtown neighborhood as one of them raped her for 30 minutes.
Authorities said Jusiah Jones, 12, shoved rocks in the girl’s mouth so she couldn’t scream while Nelson Nunez, 13, sexually assaulted her.
A third boy, Xavier Tyson, is accused of participating as well; he was 14 at the time.
While police arrested them on juvenile charges the next day, all three are now charged as adults following a grand jury indictment issued on Wednesday. Court records show they were booked into the Metrowest Detention Center on Thursday and Jones and Nunez appeared in adult bond court on Friday, where a judge ordered them held without bond.
Tyson, now 15, was initially believed Friday to be charged solely as a juvenile, but Miami-Dade prosecutors confirmed that afternoon that he was indicted on adult charges as well.
Police said a fourth boy witnessed the incident.
According to the Miami Police Department, the rape happened at The Green Haven Project community garden, located at 1160 NW Second Ave., near Frederick Douglass Elementary School.
MPD arrest reports state that the young girl was leaving a friend’s house in Overtown when she saw Jones, Nunez and the two other boys in a parking lot area.
According to police, Nunez grabbed the girl and took her to a couch within the garden as Jones and the other boys followed. The report states that the victim told police that Jones and Tyson “held her by the arms and legs preventing her from leaving” before Nunez started raping her.
More details about the alleged assault came after a woman who heard a commotion and saw the girl in the aftermath of the assault had her son call the boy who witnessed it, according to the report. Police said she heard a recounting of the incident over the phone, which she partially recorded, and described the call to investigators.
According to the report, the witness at the scene, after saying over the phone “what your momma seen, it wasn’t like that,” recounted that Tyson “pulled down the victim’s bra as the victim was yelling to stop and proceeded to play with her breasts while holding her hands.”
Then, he said that Nunez asked one of the boys, “You think I should put it in?” and then began raping her, the report states.
“The victim began to yell, ‘No, no, stop, stop, it hurts’ and while she was yelling, (Jones) put rocks inside her mouth to shut her up” as the rape continued for a half-hour, the report states.
The woman said as she went to pick up her mail, she heard the girl screaming, “Stop, no, I’m not playing, I’m not playing.”
She told police, according to the report, that she went upstairs and asked, “Who is screaming?” and got no response. Then, she said she heard the girl’s father, whom she knows, yelling his daughter’s name.
“The victim stated that (Nunez) finally stopped when they heard her father calling her name, at which point (Nunez), the co-defendants, and the witness all ran towards the opposite direction of the sound of the victim’s fathers voice,” police wrote.
A witness would eventually flag down an MPD patrol officer to report the rape, the report states, and detectives interviewed those involved.
The boy who witnessed the crime would tell detectives, according to the report, that he “did not intervene because he was outnumbered and was afraid of getting beat up.”
Prosecutors say all all three boys are facing a false imprisonment charge, while Nunez and Jones are facing sexual battery charges.
Nunez is additionally facing a kidnapping charge, while Tyson is charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a child.
Here is a statement from a member of The Green Haven Project:
“The Green Haven Project is deeply saddened by this unforeseen and unacceptable incident and stands with the victim and her family. As a community garden, our space is meant to serve the community by providing access to fresh food. Like many public community spaces, we recognize that spaces open to the public can attract both positive and negative activity; however, an opening caused by nearby construction activity created unintended access, after hours, and this occurred during non-operational hours, when the garden is normally closed and secured, following an unauthorized intrusion into the space. We remain committed to serving the community.”
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