Alleged Groping Victim Talks To NBC 10 News
Victim Led Police To Suspect
POSTED: 4:34 p.m. EDT August 13, 2003
UPDATED: 8:25 a.m. EDT August 14, 2003
PHILADELPHIA -- When Melina Hammer felt somebody grab her on the buttocks and saw him ride off on a bicycle, she was stunned. Then, she got mad, helping police to nab the alleged serial groper.
Hammer, 29, talked exclusively to NBC 10 News' Denise Nakano and told her she was not about to let her attacker get away.
"I thought about how terrible it was. How I felt paranoid. It happened so quickly, I couldn't put together what had just happened until he was already five feet in front of me and he's on a bicycle traveling, so I'm not in the capacity to -- I'm the kind of person that would love to wrench him off the bike and that just didn't happen.
Instead the 29-year-old did the next best thing. She rushed over to the Famous 4th Street Deli and asked for the owner's help. Together they called 9-1-1.
"She was under control. She was clear. She was articulate. She helped the situation. She made the situation," said David Auspitz, the deli owner.
Police said that without her quick action they wouldn't have been able to catch the suspect so fast. They quickly took Alexandro Jorge Perez, 27, into custody and they are investigating him in nine other attacks.
"I figured that it would only be right to alert police officers because I don't want this to happen to somebody else. It's not supposed to happen to me, Hammer said.
Hammer didn't know it at the time of the attack, but she was the 10th woman to be attacked. Police suspect the same man in all 10 cases.
"I was livid. (I thought) 'How dare you?' How dare someone decide that that's going do happen to me and you're going to make me feel like a victim. That's not cool," Hammer said.
Some people are calling her a hero, but Hammer said all she wanted was justice.
"There needs to be some kind of lesson taught to him where he can understand how it feels. I'd like him to understand what it feels like. Then I think he'd be less likely to try and do something like that," Hammer said.
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