Says Millions Are United in Prayer for Gang Victim : Koch Leads Prayers for Savaged Jogger

Mayor Edward I. Koch led a multifaith prayer service Tuesday outside the Manhattan hospital where a 28-year-old investment banker was in a coma after a brutal rape and attack while she was jogging in Central Park.

“Millions of New Yorkers of every religion on Earth are united in prayer for the young woman who lies comatose in Metropolitan Hospital,” Koch told about 200 people, including a contingent of 50 joggers who arrived en masse from the park to show their concern.

” . . . We ask that she be restored--as she was--before that night. We ask that still another mountain be moved. Let hate and rancor be removed from our hearts, and in their place let wisdom and justice rule our actions.”

Koch was joined by a rabbi, a minister and a priest, all praying for the young woman who was assaulted by a gang of teen-agers who later said they were out “wilding”--roving in a pack and attacking victims at random.

Neighbors Bitter, Fearful

The randomness and brutality of the crime last Wednesday night has shocked many New Yorkers. But it has also left some residents of the Schomburg Plaza apartment towers north of the park, where four of the accused attackers lived, bitter and fearful.

“These are kids we watched grow up,” said Marilyn Davis, a member of the residents council, as she stood outside the hospital. “We don’t know what the facts are. We teach our children everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Those boys, we feel, have been lynched even before they have had the opportunity to tell their side of what happened.”

Earlier in the day outside the Metropolitan Hospital Center in East Harlem, where Koch later appeared, community leaders and a sparse turnout from the Schomburg towers offered additional prayers. Some residents in telephone interviews later said they did not know about the sympathy demonstration.

Other teen-agers, who had come to offer sympathy, blamed peer pressure for some of what happened.

‘Nobody Wants to Be Outside’

“It’s just kids are wild nowadays,” said Shante Chunn, 15, who came with a delegation from a nearby high school in East Harlem to express concern. “Nobody wants to be outside the group. Nobody wants to, if they say, ‘Let’s go wilding,’ you are not going to say, ‘I don’t want to go.’ ”

“I think, after a while, personalities become desensitized to the humanity of others,” said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, pastor of the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church in Brooklyn. “I have been saying this for years, 30 years. Unless people in this society, all people of all national backgrounds, find a way to come together in solidarity and express their opposition to violence based upon pigmentation, based upon national origin or religion, unless this happens, this society is going to come apart.”

A grand jury began hearing evidence in the case Tuesday. After they were initially questioned, some of the accused attackers whistled at policewomen and sang a rap song in their precinct holding pen. But by Tuesday, officials said, the seriousness of what happened had begun to sink in.

Ruby Ryles, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said two of the accused were beaten by fellow inmates at the city jail on Rikers Island, where they have been held since their arrest. Neither was seriously injured.

The victim, who worked in the corporate finance department of Salomon Bros. and who has not been identified because of her rape, remained in critical condition. Physicians said she had been taken off a respirator and had begun to breathe on her own. It still was not clear whether she suffered irreversible brain damage.

In court proceedings opposing releasing the eight accused teen-agers on bail, Assistant Dist. Atty. Elizabeth Lederer said a 14-year-old in his videotaped confession admitted participating in the entire rampage and had named others as taking part.

The grand jury was expected to consider lab tests from some of the teen-agers’ bloodstained clothing and additional testimony from other people who were injured less seriously in the park attack.

The Manhattan district attorney is asking the grand jury to return indictments for rape, attempted murder and assault on the female jogger, and for riot, assault and robbery for an attack on a 40-year-old male jogger.