LANCASTER — A Lancaster man has been charged with two misdemeanor counts of indecent assault after allegedly touching two women on their buttocks in separate incidents that occurred in a 90-minute span Thursday afternoon.
Ricardo Hernandez-Franqui, 27, was taken into custody on Saturday, one day after an arrest warrant was issued, according to Lancaster Police.
Officers were called to the first block of East King Street at 2:04 p.m. in response to a female victim who reported she had been touched on the posterior by an unknown man. The woman, 42, said she had been walking on the 200 block of North Lime Street when the man grabbed her buttocks with out her permission and fled, police say.
The woman provided a detailed description of her assailant to police, who located a man matching the description a short time later at Musser Park. The man, later identified as Hernandez-Franqui, was identified by the victim.
Police released Hernandez-Franqui after charging him with indecent assault without consent, a misdemeanor of the second degree. According to police, Hernandez-Franqui could not be arrested at the time because of the grading of the crime and the fact that there were no exceptions met for an arrest without a warrant.
At 3:38 p.m., police say they received a second call, this time from an employee at a business on the first block of East King Street, who reported that an unknown man had cornered her and touched her buttocks. Police say they were able to identify the suspect as Hernandez-Franqui, but could not locate him because he had fled the scene prior to their arrival, and was not found as his known address on the 300 block of East King Street.
An arrest warrant was issued for Hernandez-Franqui by the Lancaster Police Special Investigation Unit on Friday. He was located Saturday at about 1 p.m., when an officer spotted him near the intersection of North Lime and East Orange Streets and took him into custody.
He was held for arraignment and committed to Lancaster County Prison on $200,000 bail, police say.
