Brooklyn Teen's Rapist Sentenced 24 Years Later, DA Says

FLATLANDS, BROOKLYN — A Brooklyn man who raped a teenage girl at gunpoint almost 25 years ago was sentenced for his crime on Friday, prosecutors said.

Franklin Gardner, 48, will spend up to 20 years in prison after DNA testing linked him to the rape of a 15-year-old in the Glenwood Houses on Aug. 28, 1994, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office announced.

That night, the girl told her parents what the armed man had done to her onto the roof of their building on Ralph Avenue and Farragut Road, prosecutors said.

The Brooklyn parents rushed their daughter to Brookdale Hospital to receive an evidence collection kit, but police were not immediately able to match the findings to a suspect, said prosecutors.

The rape kit samples were only linked to Gardner in 2015, after he had served 20 years on a New Jersey carjacking charge, because Gardner was ordered to provide police with a DNA profile upon his release, prosecutor said.

Gardner, of Bedford-Stuyvesant, was arrested on Dec. 15, 2015, and pleaded guilty to rape in Brooklyn Criminal Court in April, said prosecutors.

A Brooklyn judge sentenced Gardner to spend 10 to 20 years behind bars 24 years after the rape occurred, prosecutors said.

Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn District Attorney's office.