Ex-con sentenced to 37 to life in prison for NYC sidewalk shed rape

A registered sex offender was sentenced to 37 years to life in prison on Wednesday for the brutal assault and rape of a young woman in Manhattan inside a sidewalk construction shed.

Darryl Phelps, 62 , was convicted of predatory sexual assault and sexual abuse by a jury following his trial for the horrific 2021 act of violence towards a 23-year-old woman from Korea while she was walking home from her job as a waiter in Koreatown.

“I desperately want the perpetrator to be punished,” the victim wrote in a statement read in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday by Assistant District Attorney Austin Minogue.

“I want him to get draconian punishment if possible.”

Darryl Phelps was sentenced to 37 years to life in prison for raping a woman in a Manhattan sidewalk shed.

On December 22, 2021, the predator knocked the woman to the ground after striking her in the head with a hard object and then punched her repeatedly and threatened to kill her if she made any noise.

He then proceeded to take off her pants, sexually assault her and rape her, while holding her down with one arm while wrapping the other around her neck.

“I can’t forget what he told me when he removed my clothes and took off his clothes — ‘I am going to kill you, mutilate your dead body and throw away,’” the woman recalled in her statement.

The sexual assault took place inside an outdoor construction shed in Koreatown on December 22, 2021.

Phelps was convicted of convicted of predatory sexual assault and sexual abuse.

“The man seemed to know what he was doing was wrong and was overly sensitive to the sound around him,” her statement read.

The victim was in New York on a student visa and left the country following the incident. She has not returned since.

At his sentencing Wednesday, Justice Felicia Mennin told Phelps: “You restrained this young woman against her will and violated her. Not once, not twice but three separate times during this incident.

Phelps reacting to the sentencing on March 1, 2023.

The victim wrote in a statement that she wanted Phelps to get a "draconian punishment." — The victim wrote in a statement that she wanted Phelps to get a “draconian punishment.”

Phelps was previously convicted of attempted rape in 1997.

“You have scared her for life and you have effectively imposed a life sentence of horrible memories and psychological damage,” Mennin continued.

Phelps, who was convicted of attempted rape in 1997 and was on lifetime parole at the time of the assault, was found guilty after less than an hour of deliberations.

“Notably, while this survivor did not return to the United States to testify, our prosecutors were able to secure this conviction using body-worn camera footage, eyewitness testimony, and other evidence,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a statement.