Man Gets 30-Year Sentence for Raping Bird-Watcher in Central Park A 74-year-old bird-watcher who was raped in Central Park confronted her attacker in court on Wednesday at his sentencing, describing in detail how he brutally assaulted her while she was photographing hummingbirds. Her voice did not quaver as she pointed an angry finger at David Albert Mitchell, a bearish, bearded man who sat sullenly a few feet away in an orange prison jump suit. "Make no mistake, this is a sexual terrorist," she said. There is only one proper punishment for a terrorist. He must be locked away in a horrible prison for the rest of his life. "You, David Albert Mitchell, for the pain you inflicted on me and, by association, on my loving family and friends, may you rot in hell for all eternity," she added. Mr. Mitchell, a 43-year-old drifter from West Virginia with a history of arrests for violence against women, stared straight ahead during her statement. Justice Bonnie G. Wittner of State Supreme Court in Manhattan sentenced Mr. Mitchell to 30 years in prison, with an additional 10 years of supervised release. It was the maximum she could give him under the terms of his plea bargain with the Manhattan district attorney's office. "For a plea bargain, this is one of the highest sentences I have ever given pretrial," Justice Wittner said. My intention was to punish him and make sure he will never hurt any other person again. "I believe this defendant is in his 40s," she added. Based on my knowledge of him and his violent tendency, I don't know if he will survive 30 years in prison. Prosecutors said Mr. Mitchell would be eligible for parole consideration after serving 25 years. The victim was attacked on Sept. 12, 2012, in a wooded area near Strawberry Fields. In her statement to the court, she said Mr. Mitchell grabbed her from behind and slammed her head into the ground. She broke a finger trying to fight him off, but he held her down and yelled: "Shut up, shut up, shut up. I'll cut your jugular. "I stopped fighting," she said. I figured I was a goner. Then, she told the court, Mr. Mitchell raped and sodomized her "like a rabid dog." He took her camera bag, telling her to count to 100 before moving. She immediately reported the crime to the police. After fleeing the park, Mr. Mitchell groped two women on the Upper West Side, prosecutors said. Two weeks ago, Mr. Mitchell pleaded guilty to the top charge against him - rape in the first degree - as well as to sexually motivated robbery in the second degree. He also pleaded guilty to a separate weapons possession charge, admitting he pulled a knife on a man and threatened to stab him during an argument in the park in August 2012. Roughly a week before the rape, Mr. Mitchell had another ugly encounter with the victim. She had taken a picture of him masturbating in a wooded area, and he threatened to take her camera, she told the police. Mr. Mitchell is from Jenkinjones, W.Va., where he has a long arrest record, The Associated Press reported. He was charged with raping and killing an 86-year-old woman when he was 18, but was acquitted in that case. A second sexual assault charge a few months later, this time for an attack on a woman in her 70s, was dropped in a plea bargain. Starting in 2003, he spent eight years in a Virginia jail for the abduction of his ex-girlfriend. After the sentencing, the victim hugged several female friends, some of them fellow bird-watchers, who had come to court to support her. "He finally met his match," said one of her friends, declining to give her name. This time he went after the wrong person.