Woman Captures Alleged Flasher On Green Line
BOSTON (CBS) - A woman captured a man accused of exposing and fondling himself on a packed Green Line train on Thursday and brought him to police.
MBTA Police say they received a call to respond to the train, which was at Packard's Corner.
When officers arrived, they say a woman walked up to the cruiser while dragging a man by his sweatshirt.
"This is him," she said, according to MBTA police.
The victim, who asked not to be identified, told officers that the suspect, 36-year-old Michael Galvin of Somerville, made his way through the crowded train to get to her, and when she looked down, he was exposing and fondling himself.
"This guy was just being a real creeper and I just noticed he was immediately staring at hme and just kept moving closer and I was just listening to music and trying to forget about the whole work day. And then I just looked up and there was this huge guy staring down at me being a creep, and then I looked down and he had exposed himself," the victim told WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens.
Galvin claimed to officers that his shorts accidentally fell down, but he was unaware of it until a woman in front of him screamed. He said he tried to pull up his shorts, apologized, and jumped off the train at Packard's Corner.
The victim says she screamed, but no one on the train did anything.
"Nobody was even paying attention to this. I have to get him," she said.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Carl Stevens reports
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She followed Galvin off the train, grabbed him and told him, "You aren't going anywhere."
"So then I ran after him, I basically like lunged off the train after him and I just held him there. I ended up waiting for about 10 minutes for the cops and the whole time I just was berating him and telling him pretty much that he was not a human being, and then the cops came," she said.
She said she was driven by an adrenaline rush fueled by anger and disgust.
Stevens asked her if she thought her actions sends a message. Her answer? She hopes so.
"I think like half of my friends who are girls, and even a guy who told me that this has happened to them and they didn't say anything, they literally sat there, ignored it and just pretended it didn't happen," she said. "That's disgusting to me."
Galvin is charged with open and gross lewdness.
