"It just kind of turned us upside down," said Haydee Ida Rosario, 39, a receptionist who lives in the Gun Hill Houses, scene of the March 26 attack. "It's not just happening around us, it's happening here. It's scary."
Rosario was one of more than 65 residents who packed the complex's senior center Thursday for a police-sponsored meeting to discuss the case and learn about rape prevention.
"If one woman gets raped, or two, it's like it happened to all of us," Rosario said before the meeting. "All of us are violated. All of us are afraid to walk out of the building."
The attack at the North Bronx housing project was the latest by a man who police believe has raped nine women in the borough since May, said Detective Raymond Layne of the special victims liaison unit, who spoke at the meeting. Seven of the attacks occurred in city housing projects. The same man is suspected in three attacks in Manhattan, two of them in public housing. All the victims had also been robbed.
"Police fear the rapist is striking more frequently," said Capt. James Campbell of the Bronx detectives in an interview.
After the first incident, the rapist attacked again in August, but stopped until November when he began to attack monthly. A woman was raped Feb. 19 at the Bronx River Houses in West Farms and March 17 at the Pelham Parkway Houses in Bronxdale.
All of the attacks occurred between midnight and 8 a.m. and many of them were on weekends, Campbell said. The youngest victim was 13 years old; the oldest was 43.
Victims described the rapist as a black man with medium complexion in his 20s, police said. He stands 5-foot-4 to 5-foot-9 and weighs 120 to 140 pounds. He wears a green army-type jacket, covers the lowest part of his face with a scarf and carries a black gun.
"Because of the fact that the women get a limited vision of his facial features, we have had difficulty finding him," Campbell said.
While police organize meetings like the one last week -- a similar meeting was held Wednesday at the Bronx River Houses -- project residents are taking their own safety measures.
Last week, the Gun Hill Houses tenant patrol added a late night roving unit, said Jessie Ramos, 55, a patrol supervisor. And patrol Capt. Christine Stretch started locking the basement laundry room of her building at 5 p.m., four hours earlier than usual.
Stretch, 24, also enforces her own personal safety procedure. When she goes out with friends, she phones her husband before starting home. Instead of public transportation, she takes a cab to the door and waits for her husband to meet her before she gets out.
"It's not like I'm afraid to go outside," said Stretch. "But I'm more cautious now."
Ramos said more tenants have joined the patrol since the incident and two more buildings in the complex are starting their own patrols.
Although Gun Hill Houses has seen its share of trouble -- including the murder of Irma Diaz in November -- Daisy Aponte, for one, is concerned that crime does not destroy life in the housing complex where white flowers are beginning to bloom on trees in chain link-fenced gardens.
"We don't want it going down simply because this happened," she said.