Police arrest ‘absconded’ parolee in Brooklyn Heights robbery, attempted rape
Leon Howell pretended to be an ICE agent.
Police on Thursday arrested parolee Leon Howell, suspected in the brutal beating, robbery and attempted rape of a woman in Brooklyn Heights. Photo: NYPD
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS — Police have arrested a repeat offender for allegedly assaulting, robbing and attempting to rape a woman in Brooklyn Heights while impersonating an ICE agent.
Leon Howell, 43, a resident of a homeless shelter on Ralph Avenue in Brownsville, was detained Thursday and charged with first-degree rape, first-degree robbery, second-degree assault, third-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property, police told the Brooklyn Eagle.
According to sources and the police, on Tuesday, the 51-year-old victim was standing in the lobby of CityMD on Montague Street at about 10:50 a.m. waiting for a car. Howell, claiming to be an immigration agent, allegedly forced her into a basement stairwell and beat her, attempted to rape her, and forcibly removed her chain, cellphone and purse.
Police said the woman was left with lacerations to the face and scratching and bruising throughout her body. EMS transported her to a local hospital in stable condition.
The attack in broad daylight on the busy and usually safe shopping street shocked local residents.
“This was a horrific incident in our community, made even more chilling by the report that the perpetrator pretended to be an ICE agent,” Councilmember Lincoln Restler told the Brooklyn Eagle after the attack.
“It’s so upsetting to hear this news, and our thoughts are with the victim,” Lara Birnback, executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, told the Eagle.
‘Absconded’ parolee
Howell has a long history of arrests for violent attacks and theft. In 2017, he dragged a 26-year-old woman into a bathroom stall at a Bushwick gym and choked her until she blacked out, according to court paperwork and Patch. He was convicted in Brooklyn Supreme Court of strangulation in the second degree and false personation after giving police a fake name: “Jase Daniells.”
The morning after the gym incident, while Howell was still inside the Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse on Schermerhorn Street, he attacked again, ripping out a man’s earrings and punching him in the face, DNA info reported at that time. Prior to these incidents, he had served three stints in prison for theft and the sale of a controlled substance. He also served time for an assault in the Bronx, according to NYS Department of Corrections records.
Howell was released on parole last month on Jan. 14, according to New York State Department of Corrections records. His parole status is currently listed as “absconded.”
Landmark search case
In addition to the other charges in the 2017 gym attack, Howell had also been convicted of criminal possession of stolen property. But on Jan. 8, 2025, the court vacated that particular conviction.
In the case of “The People of the State of New York v. Leon Howell,” the court threw out the stolen property charge based on the determination that the search of Howell’s jacket, which led to the discovery of the stolen property (reportedly credit cards and a cell phone belonging to yet another victim), “was not justified as a search incident to his arrest,” according to a Casemine analysis.
The determination that the evidence was improperly attained is considered to make “The People of the State of New York v. Leon Howell” a landmark case, possibly setting legal precedent for future searches and evidentiary standards in New York.
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