Ololade Adeyanju/
Surveillance video has shown a gang of four men following a helpless 50-year-old Nigerian woman before they allegedly robbed her and also forced her to perform oral sex at gunpoint.
Police said the victim, mother-of-two, left the Celestial Church of Christ, in Jamaica, Queens shortly before 11pm on Tuesday when she was attacked , CBS 2 reported.
The footage also shows the victim (who could not be identified for legal reasons), two bags in hand, walking along 150th Street in Queens, New York before the alleged attack occurred.
The four men appear in the video, walking along the other side of the street.
The suspects walk in line together before one separates from the group after spotting the helpless victim, who had just left a prayer service.
On Thursday, police arrested three of the four suspects, Julisses Ginel, 19, Justin Williams, 17, and Brandon Walker, 20.
The victim, who was forced to strip naked and perform sexual acts on the perpetrators, is being asked to identify the men in a line up.
A fourth man is still being hunted by police.
The men robbed the woman following the sexual assault and threatened her with two fake guns, police say.
The victim returned to the Celestial Church of Christ where Pastor Kehinde Oyetunde alerted the police.
The pastor told CBS2: “She was crying. She was scared, she was crying. She was just crying like a baby, we couldn’t control her.”
The men allegedly led her at gunpoint back down the block to 150th Street and Beaver Road where they attacked her behind a garbage truck demanding her wallet.
“They tell me, ‘you don’t have money so take off your clothes!'” the victim told The New York Daily News. “I said, ‘What? In the middle of the street?'”
They two men called over three other guys nearby to join them before they forced her to strip naked in the street and demanded she perform oral sex on them.
She claims she tried to scare them away by saying she was HIV-positive – which she is not – but that didn’t even frighten them. In fact, one of the men, who she described as short, went off to buy a condom.
“They said, ‘if you don’t do that, I’ll shoot you,'” the victim recounted to the Daily News. “So I did what I had to do.”
She says one of the attackers called her a “stupid African woman” and slapped her.
After the attack and the group of men fled, the woman ran back to the church, half-naked and crying to her pastor.
“She was crying and her face was full of rubbish,” Oyetunde said.
“She had her clothes in her hands. She said that they pulled a gun on her and took her stuff, then wanted to sleep with her.
“She lied and told them she was an HIV patient and to please leave her alone.”
Her pastor picked her up from the hospital where she sought treatment and brought her home. She returned to work the following day but was still shaken.
“This is horrible,” the pastor added. “She is a very kind woman. She’s been with my church for 10 years.”
“I’m very worried,” she said. “I don’t know if I can go back there.”
“There are just mean, hooligan guys who wanted to rob and sleep with somebody,’ the victim said of her attackers.
“If they just wanted money, they should have left. But they wanted more.”
Police officers were able to recover at least one condom near the scene and are processing it for DNA, the Daily News reported.
They are also testing the woman’s sweater for potential evidence.
Police said all five men are in their 20s and they do not believe the victim knew her attackers.