Mother Who Fought Off Suspected Serial Groper Shares Her Story
GRAND PRAIRIE (CBS 11 NEWS) - Surveillance video shows a North Texas mom fighting back after a man attacks her in front of her daughter.
The video released by Grand Prairie police on Thursday shows a woman wearing red wailing on her attacker in the parking lot of a grocery store.
The woman, a Grand Prairie mother of two, spoke with CBS 11 News but asked that she not be identified.
The woman says she was putting her groceries in the back eat of her car while her daughter sat in the front passenger seat. It was a Saturday afternoon outside the Kroger store on Pioneer Parkway.
As the woman moved about the car she said she felt someone grab her backside. The mom says she began to feel the man attempt to pull her pants down. She says she yelled for help, but other shoppers only watched the attack happen -- no one stepped in.
Fearing she would be separated from her daughter, the woman said she started punching the attacker in his face. "The only thing I could think of was start swinging, start punching him," she said. "I was trying to turn my [car] keys into a position where I could poke his eye out. I held on to his shirt for a while and then he just slipped out of my hands. He took off."
Before the attack, surveillance video at store shows the man parked forward in a space. He then moved his vehicle and backed into a parking spot, as if he was planning an easy escape.
Police have released video of the man, which clearly shows his face, hoping someone will recognize him and turn him in. He appears to be smoking a vapor cigarette and has a tattoo on his right arm.
The mom says the should have visible bruises and cuts. "When I started watching [the surveillance video] I broke down, because it's hard to see my daughter just stand there and watch something like that and for her to see her mom get attacked."
The Grand Prairie Police Department believes the same man groped another woman at a different store on the same day. Another woman reported being grabbed on the rear in the parking lot of the Dollar Tree on Main Street.
The attacker was seen leaving in a black, 2010-2015 Toyota Camry with paper tags.