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From: Brighton Res
Date: 26 Jul 2002
Time: 18:03:29
Remote Name: 204.178.195.100
DESPITE WARNING ABOUT ATTACKS, WOMAN IN BRIGHTON IS ASSAULTED Author(s): Jack Healy, Globe Correspondent Date: July 21, 2002 Page: B3 Section: Metro/Region Less than 12 hours after police warned Brighton residents of a masked man believed to be responsible for the attacks on at least 10 women since November, another assault occurred early yesterday morning.
The latest attack came at 1:40 a.m. near the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Foster Street, when a woman in her 20s was accosted at gunpoint and groped as she tried to get into her apartment building, police said. Her screams of "Help me! Help me!" awoke neighbors and drove off her assailant, who sped away in a silver sedan, police said. "She was screaming and crying," said Melissa Barillaro, who said she heard cries outside her first-floor bedroom window. "She didn't stop crying for so long. She was unbelievably shaken up. I'm so glad she got away."
Police spokesman Cliff Connolly said yesterday's assault follows a pattern similar to 10 other attacks dating back to last November.
Wearing a dark mask or face paint, the assailant targets women walking alone at night, police said. He wields a gun and often forces his victims into alleyways, demanding money and sexually assaulting them, police said. Yesterday the assailant, described as a white Hispanic with a light mustache, between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet tall, fled in an older-model silver Nissan Sentra with stolen Massachusetts license plates 513YEB and 1789TZ, police said.
The man has groped and injured several women, but he has not raped any of his victims, police said.
In past assaults, the assailant ran when the victims screamed, police said.
Police say the same man tried to rob a woman walking alone on Undine Road in Brighton at 10 p.m. Wednesday. The suspect grabbed the woman by her shirt and brandished a gun, but fled in his sedan when the woman screamed and blew a whistle, police said.
On June 28, the gun-toting suspect grabbed two women walking on Kilsyth Road in Brighton at 2:30 a.m. He forced them into an alley and tried to rob and sexually assault them, but the women were able to escape, police said.
Police say they believe the same man is responsible for four assaults in Brighton in March and several others in Brighton and Brookline last November and December.
Now, many Brighton residents are raising their guard.
"Once people learn about this new incident, it will very much affect our sense of safety," said Eva Webster, chairwoman of the Aberdeen Brighton Residents Association, a neighborhood group.
Longtime resident Gae Paradis said the assaults frightened her, but she said there was little she could change about her daily routine to prevent an unpredictable, random assault.
She clutched a car key between her thumb and forefinger and stabbed the air, demonstrating the only way she could think to fight off an attacker.
"When you're confronting a gun, what else can you do?" she asked.
Brighton resident Alisa Brennan said she will take extra safety precautions. "I used to keep pepper spray on my key chain, but I took it off," Brennan said. "Now, I think I'll put it back on."