One of the five young men who were wrongly convicted more than 20 years ago of raping and beating a woman in Central Park was arrested earlier this week and charged with menacing and assault stemming from an encounter in October at the park's northeast corner, the authorities said.
According to a police spokesman, the man, Kharey Wise, turned himself in on Wednesday and was charged after a woman said that he apparently threw an object at her near Fifth Avenue and 110th Street.
The episode, which took place on Oct. 1, began as Mr. Wise, 40, was arguing with a 30-year-old woman, who was not identified by the authorities. As she began to walk away, a police official said, a “square object†sailed over her shoulder and struck the ground. When she turned around, the official said, Mr. Wise was “standing and staring at her.â€
Afterward, Mr. Wise followed her for several blocks, apologizing, the official said. The wom an entered a building to pick up her child, the official said, and when she emerged, Mr. Wise was gone.
According to a criminal complaint, the woman said that “a brick came from behind her and crashed to the ground next to her.â€
“No one else was behind her except for the defendant,†the complaint added.
The arrest was first reported on Saturday in The New York Daily News.
Mr. Wise was among five teenagers who confessed in 1989 to attacking a young woman in Central Park. The woman was raped, beaten and left for dead, and the case was seen by many as emblematic of the lawlessness of the period.
The five young men later said that their confessions were coerced, and they were exonerated in 2002 after another man, Matias Reyes, was found to have committed the crime.
More recently, Mr. Wise and the others were the subjec t of a book, published in 2011 by Sarah Burns, and a film, “The Central Park Five,†released this year by Ms. Burns, her husband, David McMahon, and her father, Ken Burns.
