Dr. Zhi Alan Cheng, a Queens gastroenterologist, is in jail facing charges that he drugged a woman before raping her. He also purportedly taped the assault. The assault for which he is jailed occurred in the doctor’s home.
Another woman has come forward making similar allegations concerning an incident that occurred in an exam room at New York Presbyterian Hospital Queens.
In Dec. 2022, the Queens district attorney’s office secured a first-degree rape indictment alleging Dr. Cheng used a K-N95 mask filled with cotton balls that had been soaked in that unknown liquid to render a female victim unconscious in his apartment. When she woke up, she allegedly found the video of her own sexual assault. Cheng is currently awaiting trial, held without bond on Rikers Island.
The other victim gave an exclusive interview with the NBC New York I-Team and Telemundo Investiga, she said she was assaulted in June 2021 when Dr. Cheng allegedly entered her hospital room the day before she was scheduled to have her gall bladder removed. The patient, then 19 years old, said Dr. Cheng unexpectedly injected her with a substance that made her fall asleep and “when she woke up [the] doctor was no longer in [the] room” but she was experiencing “extreme pain to [her] lower abdomen.”
Liakas said, at the time, both his client and her mother expressed concern the teenager might have been sexually assaulted while she was unconscious. Though her hospital records do not include an explicit accusation of rape, they do show medical staff initially took that possibility seriously.
The brazen nature of the two assaults have led investigators to wonder if there are other victims of Dr. Cheng.
