A decorated former city EMT went on trial this week over allegations he sexually assaulted five women over a decade, using an FDNY-issued key to aid in the attacks. Angus Pascall, 35, has been charged with five assaults on women between 2001 and 2010, and prosecutors said they have DNA evidence that can link him to all five scenes. Among those incidents, Pascall is accused of raping an 11-year-old in a Bed-Stuy elevator—he was allegedly able to do so by shutting down the elevator using his FDNY key, which prevented anyone from interrupting him.
Pascall was arrested in 2010 after he allegedly raped a 20-year-old woman at gunpoint in a car; that victim had jotted down the license plate number of the car, which was tracked to Pascall. Pascall's first alleged victim took the stand this week, telling jurors he asked to leave a package for her upstairs neighbor, then snuck into her East Flatbush apartment in 2001, raped her, then left. “I was scared,” she recalled. “I was trying not to think about what was happening.”
His other alleged victims include a woman who he allegedly forced to perform oral sex inside an elevator in May 2009 and a teenager who escaped another attack in October of that year. When he was first arrested, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly noted that Pascall used the key in several of the attacks: "We believe the defendant used a special elevator key in order to bring the elevator down to where he was and to make certain that no one else would be able to use the elevator," said Kelly. "He got the elevator key because he was an EMT."
After the brutal attack on the 11-year-old, a neighbor told the News: "That day I could just hear the family yelling and crying and one of the cousins told me what happened to that poor baby," neighbor Kim Clark said. "This man was a sicko and a pervert and I'm so relieved they caught him." You can learn more about FDNY "master keys" here.
