NEW YORK – Police are looking for a man who, according to them, has groped a woman in a Lower Manhattan subway station.
According to the New York Police Department, officers received a report indicating that around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday a 26-year-old woman was exiting the 4/5 line stairs at the Broadway and Wall Street subway station when the unknown man approached her from behind and grabbed her buttocks tightly.
The man then fled.
Police describe the unknown man as 30-40 years old, 5’10 “tall, 160 lbs, with black hair and last seen wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans, multicolored sandals and a tattoo on his right forearm. .
NYPD Crime Stoppers shared surveillance videos and photos obtained by the MTA showing the male individual being attacked.
Authorities urge anyone with information regarding this incident to call the NYPD Spanish Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
This latest sexual assault follows a series of sexual assaults in Manhattan that has alarmed residents.
Two women, one a 43-year-old runner, the other unknown, were sexually assaulted in Manhattan on Thursday and one of the suspects could be a serial predator linked to two other attacks this year, according to police.
In one of the attacks on Thursday, a woman was jogging on Pier 45 in the West Village just before 6am, authorities said. The victim was raped under a gazebo on the dock and police said the victim told them the suspect remained on a Citi bicycle. She was said to be wearing a burgundy sweater, black pants and a yellow hat.
“Clearly he had been injured, fallen or something. He had blood on his elbows right here, “said Gabrielle Sumkin, who was also out for a run and noticed the distraught woman. Sumkin called emergency services and stayed with the victim until the police and the first few arrived. rescuers He said the woman looked disoriented while he was with her.
“She was like, ‘I need help. I need help’. Over and over, “Sumkin said.” She was sitting there, she didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to get too close. I didn’t want to ask him what happened or interfere or anything like that. “
The woman was taken to the hospital for her injuries.
A senior police official said the suspect later tried to buy a bus ticket with a stolen credit card from the Port Authority, but was denied. So he went to Target and bought $ 39 of Red Bull with a different stolen card, the official said. Port Authority policemen handcuffed him an hour later, the senior police officer said.
That suspect has been identified as Carl Phanor, 28, of Manhattan. Police said they were also looking for him in two other attacks in Manhattan between March and October of this year. The sexual assault and robbery on March 27 took place at Pier 40 on the west side of Manhattan, while the incident in early October occurred on an FDR service road near 37th Street.
Phanor was arrested by Manhattan Special Victims officers and faces a series of charges in connection with the three alleged incidents. Police said he was charged with robbery for the attacks in March and October, the latest of which was also charged with strangulation and sexual assault. For Thursday’s attack, according to police, he is accused of rape, sexual assault, theft and invalid use of a credit card.
Law enforcement sources said that when Phanor was arrested at the Port Authority bus terminal on Thursday afternoon, he had apparently shaved his eyebrows from the previous two attacks.
Few details were available about Thursday’s other sexual assault, which occurred in Central Park near East 109th Street and East Drive around 01:30. A person of interest has been taken into custody but no charges have yet been filed. The woman, also hospitalized, allegedly met her attacker in that incident.
