Police Looking for Teen-Age Jogger’s Rapist : Crime: A 15-year-old was attacked off the bike trail near her east Yorba Linda home. Residents tell shock.

Police are looking for a man who raped a 15-year-old jogger Saturday afternoon off the bike trail behind her apartment complex in a east Yorba Linda neighborhood.

The girl, whose name was not released because of her age and the nature of the crime, was jogging on the trail about 4:20 p.m. when a man emerged from the bushes, grabbed her and dragged her back to the underbrush, Brea Police Sgt. Doug Dickerson said. She screamed but her apartment complex was several hundred yards away, Dickerson said, and apparently no one heard her.

The girl, who attends an area high school, walked back to her residence near La Palma Avenue and Camino de Bryant after the attack and was taken to St. Jude Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Fullerton where she was treated and released, Dickerson said.

Residents in the relatively new housing development next to the apartment complex were shaken and surprised to hear of the attack Sunday.

“We all feel safe here because it’s all nice, new homes,” said Arlene Dragon, a 2 1/2-year resident of the neighborhood. “There aren’t any stores around, and there just aren’t people hanging around out here.”

Dragon said that the bike trail is elevated and paved but that there are trees and bushes about 15 feet down the banks.

“This is the first I’ve ever heard of this happening,” another resident said. “This is a real safe area. It’s Yorba Linda--things like this don’t happen here.”

Bob Gardiner, a 3 1/2-year resident of the area, said, “I know that there are transients who stay in Featherly Park and I know of some incidents, but never a rape or an attack like that.” Featherly Regional Park is an overnight camping ground that fronts the housing tract on the east side.

“Yes, it does have a profound effect on us,” Gardiner said. “And there are people out there all the time. Gosh, that’s a shame.”

Dickerson said that there had been some attacks in the area and in the park in the past but that they were not similar and that he did not believe them to be connected.

Police are looking for a man who looks Latino, about 5-foot-10, 140 pounds, with short, black hair. He was wearing a white T-shirt, white shorts, white tennis shoes and a maroon baseball cap when the attack occurred, Dickerson said.