Police are looking for a man they say followed a 13-year-old girl from the subway into a residential building, then into a stairwell, where they say he tried to put his hands down her pants and take off her clothes.
Police say the girl was on her way to visit a friend and had just gotten off the 6 train at the Southern Boulevard station in the Bronx at around 7:45 p.m. Monday when the man started following her down the street. Surveillance video obtained exclusively by News 4 shows the man close behind the girl as she walks.
When she walked into her friend's apartment building near Southern Boulevard and Leggett Avenue, he attacked her in the stairwell and molester her as he tried to remove her clothes, police said.
She fought off the suspect, police say, and he ran off.
The girl's father, who asked not to be identified, told News 4 in Spanish Wednesday, "She saw him. She knows somebody was following her. And when she went to the building she was scared."
Her mother told News 4 "We want somebody to tell who it is. What happened right now, that could happen to someone else."
"We're scared now. We don't know what's going to happen, this is going to happen again."
The girl's mother says "she's not feeling good. She's scared."
Mabeline Lopez, who's lived in the South Bronx neighborhood for 40 years, says parents are afraid to let their children go outside now.
"Now you can't even let them go to the store because you don't know what's going to happen around here. You gotta keep your eye open, look at who's behind you," she said.
Cops released their own surveillance video of the suspect walking on the street (above). Anyone with information is asked to call authorities.
