The mother of the Brooklyn man wanted for a brutal attack on an elderly woman admitted her son has a troubled past, but denied he was capable of raping an 82-year-old.
“I can believe the robbery, he’s been arrested before, but if anything he’s overprotective of women,” Janasia Jackson, 34, said of her son, 18-year-old Asa Roberts.
Jackson said Roberts, who never graduated from high school, lived with an aunt in Flatbush and was working a construction job. She described him as a church-going kid — painting a far different picture from the sadistic animal who snuck into a Brighton Beach home and raped and beat an elderly woman Monday.
Jackson didn’t deny her son’s long criminal history. Sources told the Daily News that history includes Roberts getting busted for a sex crime when he was 9 years old.
“He was the type of child who was always fighting and stuff,” the mom said. “He’s been arrested eight times, but he wasn’t a rapist.”
The young mother, pregnant with a little girl, said that she saw Roberts Tuesday night in Crown Heights, but he got away from cops as they closed in.
She claimed police have been targeting her son since he attacked a cop after jumping a turnstile at the Utica and Eastern Pkwy. station a month and a half ago. But as she defended her son, Jackson also said her thoughts were with the defenseless victim.
“My heart goes out to her,” she said. “She’s an elderly woman. I can’t believe what she’s going through. It’s devastating.”
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