Brooklyn Park Police hope surveillance video will help solve attempted rape case

BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. (KMSP) - Police are hoping surveillance video will help them locate a suspect who kidnapped a woman from an ALDI's grocery store parking lot in Brooklyn Park, drove her to another location and attempted to rape her on May 12, according to a release.

The woman was able to escape and call authorities, but the suspect got away.

The surveillance video shows the woman returning a cart when a figure wielding a knife charges toward her from behind.

"This is a very rare occurrence anywhere, and certainly in Brooklyn Park, we just don't see this type of violence occur very often," said Brooklyn Park Deputy Police Chief Mark Bruley.

What's also uncommon, police say, is the fact that the suspect could be as young as 14 years old.

He is described as a 5-foot-4 with a slender build, wearing a black zip-up jacket with no design on the front and dark colored tennis shoes. Police said the man's nose and mouth was also covered with a royal blue bandana.

The suspect forced the woman to drive more than a mile to Brooklyn Center, where he tried to rape her on a dead end street. She managed to escape before that happened, however, and call authorities.

"What we do see here is someone who is desperate, somebody that has to be stopped," Bruley said. "That's why we have so many resources through our major crimes unit trying to figure this out."

Anyone with information about the incident is urged to call Brooklyn Park Police Department Detective Russ Czapar at 763-493-8287.

"We're really hoping that someone that might know something may see the video, it may trigger something in their memory," Bruley said. "Many people were in the parking lot so they may not have realized what had occurred, that they might have seen something that they realized could have been important, so we're asking anybody that might have been in parking lot at that time, please contact us."