Santa Ana police are hunting a man caught on camera groping a mother inside a Target store as she pushed her young daughter in a shopping cart.
The July 22 incident unfolded at the Target on 17th Street in Santa Ana, Orange County, when the suspect walked past the victim and grabbed her buttocks, according to surveillance footage released by authorities. The victim had been shopping with her child when the alleged assault occurred in the middle of the retail store.
“As the suspect continued walking, he grabbed his groin over his shorts while staring at the victim,” the Santa Ana Police Department wrote in a social media post about the incident. The department shared the surveillance video publicly as part of its effort to identify and locate the man.
Police described the wanted man as standing 6-foot-1 and weighing approximately 200 pounds. He has black hair and a black goatee. At the time of the alleged assault, he was wearing a black shirt bearing a car logo and black shorts.
The Santa Ana case follows another disturbing groping incident that took place on April 19 inside a Vallarta Supermarket in the Winnetka area of Los Angeles County. In that earlier attack, the victim, identified only as Monica, said a man approached her claiming there was a bug on her back and offered to remove it.
“You feel so violated, and it’s like invading your personal space,” Monica said at the time of the supermarket incident. “You’re trying to process what is happening to you at that moment.”
The two cases have drawn renewed attention to the ongoing issue of sexual assault in public retail spaces across Southern California. Both incidents were captured on surveillance cameras, though the suspects in each case remain at large.
Law enforcement officials have urged anyone with information about the Santa Ana Target suspect to contact the Santa Ana Police Department. The surveillance footage released by police shows the man walking through the store shortly before the alleged assault.
The Santa Ana Police Department continues to investigate the July 22 Target incident and is asking the public for assistance in identifying the suspect shown in the released video.