17-Year-Old Faces Charges In Attacks In Central Park

The police arrested a 17-year-old from Queens yesterday in connection with the June 11 attacks on women in Central Park, bringing the number of men arrested to 18. The youth, Dellon Evans, was charged with felony abuse and riot, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney's office. Mr. Evans, who was one of the suspects whose photographs -- taken from videos of the attack -- were circulated in the media by the police, turned himself in yesterday, said Lt. Dennis Cirillo, a police spokesman. Lieutenant Cirillo did not have details on what Mr. Evans, of Craft Avenue in Rosedale, is accused of doing in the chaos after the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, during which crowds of men doused women with water andmolested them in a corner of the park. Four more women reported yesterday that they were abused, Lieutenant Cirillo said, making a total of 53 women who have now reported that they were groped, stripped or otherwise abused. Fourteen of the women were also victims of robberies or attempted robberies, the lieutenant said. Mr. Evans's sisters and brother and his brother's girlfriend, all of whom said they were at the parade with him, said last night that he did nothing wrong and actually tried to stop a group of young men from attacking a girl he had been talking to. ''So many of these girls are looking for money that they'll point the finger at anyone they can remember who was at the park that day,'' said his brother's girlfriend, Melicia Thom, 18, who said that she herself was doused with water and had to be protected from a gang of boys by Mr. Evans's brother, Tyrone Evans. One of Mr. Evans's sisters said that she was slapped on the rear at one point. Another sister, Carlotta Evans, 20, said: ''He wouldn't want anyone to do anything like that to us. So I know he wouldn't ever do anything like that to anyone else.'' The family said that Mr. Evans, an immigrant from Guyana and a student at Springfield Gardens High School, was a quiet young man who had never been in trouble and did not so much as curse.