Police in Santa Ana are searching for a man accused of groping a woman inside a Target store in Orange County, an incident investigators say was captured on surveillance video.
The footage shows the woman pushing her young daughter in a shopping cart at the Target on 17th Street last month when the suspect walks by and grabs her buttocks, according to authorities.
“As the suspect continued walking, he grabbed his groin over his shorts while staring at the victim,” the Santa Ana Police Department said in a social media post describing the July 22 incident.
Investigators said the suspect is about 6 feet 1 inch tall and weighs roughly 200 pounds. He has black hair and a black goatee, and was last seen wearing a black shirt with a car logo and black shorts at the time of the alleged assault.
The Santa Ana case comes after another troubling incident in Los Angeles County, where a woman reported being groped April 19 inside a Vallarta Supermarket in the Winnetka area.
That victim, identified only as Monica, said the man approached her by claiming there was a bug on her back and offering to remove it. Instead, she said, he touched her inappropriately.
“You feel so violated, and it’s like invading your personal space,” Monica said at the time. “You’re trying to process what is happening to you at that moment.”
