Philadelphia police seek help solving a string of sexual assaults, some targeting nightclub workers

Philadelphia police are looking for the public’s help in apprehending the person they say is responsible for a string of recent sexual assaults and attempted attacks, many of which targeted women working at nightclubs.

The first attempted assault occurred early last Saturday morning when a man driving a silver or gray Dodge Charger with no visible license plate followed a bartender from her workplace on the 6100 block of Passyunk Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia to her home in Media, where he fled the scene.

Over the next three days, the man would strike five more times, Capt. Mark Burgmann of the Police Department’s Special Victims Unit said.

Four victims described the man as medium height with a “chunky” or “stocky” build and “dreadlocks” or “braids.”

Around midnight Saturday, the man followed a woman from a gentlemen’s club in Old City to a West Norriton Wawa parking lot, where she called police. Later Sunday morning, around 5, he forced a woman from her vehicle at gunpoint using a silver handgun and sexually assaulted her in an alley near Temple University Hospital.

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The next day, he followed a woman from a Southwest Philadelphia gentlemen’s club to her apartment building in Spring Garden. She called police after a Dodge Charger with an obscured license plate “piggybacked” and followed her car through her parking garage’s locked security gate.

On Tuesday, the man again followed a woman home from a gentlemen’s club, this one on South Front Street in the Whitman Park section of South Philadelphia, to an apartment building on North Eighth Street in North Philadelphia. The woman told police she ran screaming to a neighbor’s apartment after she saw a suspicious man slide along the wall toward her.

Later that morning, the man posed as an electrical worker and gained access to an apartment in that same building where he sexually assaulted and robbed two people at gunpoint, using the silver handgun other victims reported seeing.

Police say he fled that assault southbound on Eighth Street toward Poplar Street.

Anyone with information can contact the Philadelphia Police Department at 215-686-TIPS (8477) or tips@phillypolice.com.