(The Guardian) -- On the evening of 19 April, as 28-year-old investment banker Trisha Meili, who was white, jogged across the northern, dilapidated section of Central Park, she was brutally attacked – bludgeoned with a rock, gagged, tied and raped. She was left for dead but discovered hours later, unconscious and suffering from hypothermia and severe brain damage.
The New York police department believed they already had the culprits in custody.
That same night, a group of more than 30 youths had entered the park from East Harlem.Some engaged in a rampage of random criminality, hurling rocks at cars, assaulting and mugging passersby. Among the group was Salaam, along with 14-year-olds Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, 15-year-old Antron McCray and 16-year-old Korey Wise. The teenagers – four African American and one Hispanic – would become known collectively as the Central Park Five.
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Ken Burns, co-director and author Sarah Burns, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Jim Dwyer, who covered the case and is interviewed in the film, and the exonerated, including Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise -- www.timestalks.com. The panel engages in a conversation about the issues raised by "The Central Park Five," the award-winning documentary about the horrific crime that occurred in Central Park in 1989, the rush to judgment and the lives of those wrongly convicted.