A Queens mother was arrested for leaving her five-year-old daughter alone with an elderly man who allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted the young girl, police said Wednesday.
Kimberly Pijuan, 30, was charged with one count of child endangerment for allegedly allowing the man she barely knew to watch her daughter on Tuesday, cops said.
Pijuan and her daughter were shopping at a Foodtown supermarket in Jackson Heights when they ran into Franz Vila, 75, and the mom agreed to let him take her kid to Frank D. O’Connor Playground, according to the NYPD.
Law enforcement sources said Pijuan and Vila had met a few months prior, and a report from WCBS-TV described the nature of their relationship as “acquaintances at best.”
When Pijuan went to pick up her daughter from the park later that day, neither the girl nor Vila showed — prompting her to call the cops and report the child missing at around 1 p.m., according to the sources.
The NYPD then launched a frantic search for the missing girl, blasting out a picture of the girl and identifying her as having last been seen wearing a pink dress with flowers on it.
Several people who had seen news reports about the missing child spotted a girl matching her description near the Roosevelt Avenue subway stop, not far from the grocery store where she went missing, police said.
The bystanders alerted officers, who took Vila in custody and brought the girl to a nearby precinct to be reunited with her mother, cops said.
At the precinct, the girl told investigators she had allegedly been sexually assaulted by Vila, sources said.
Surveillance video showed the elderly creep leading the child into his Upper East Side apartment around 12:30 p.m., police said.
Vila, of Manhattan, was charged with kidnapping, criminal sex act, imprisonment and child endangerment on Wednesday, according to the NYPD.
Vila and Pijuan were each awaiting arraignment Wednesday.
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods
