Accused harasser in Coffee Road area is assaulted, police say

A man who reportedly has been harassing people, possibly attacking women, in Modesto was assaulted at a gas station Friday night, the Police Department reported.

Several men assaulted the man at the Arco gas station at Coffee Road and Floyd Avenue after many reports about the man circulated on social media, said police spokeswoman Heather Graves. A report she had Monday morning said injuries to the man were “not severe”; she added later in the day that “he refused medical treatment for the scratches he received.”

Graves had no information on the men who attacked him but said the victim told officers he did not want to press charges.

On Friday night, the MPD shared a warning on its Facebook page: “We have received MANY calls regarding a man who is believed to be attacking females in Modesto. We have not received any reports of anyone physically harmed.”

The post included a copy of a resident’s message saying the white man appears to be in his 20s, wearing an oversize red shirt and a black jacket. He has matted orangish-yellow hair worn in cornrows. He is reported to have attempted to break into several homes, the resident says.

“This male with white skin complexion tried to follow me home while I was walking home on Keller,” she wrote. “He was a car distance away from me when my dad got to me and picked me up. He was so close to me that I can estimate he’s about 5-foot-7.”

Another resident emailed The Bee: “This individual has attacked women, tried breaking into houses, tried getting in my friend’s car with her children in it. ... He is in the Coffee/Sylvan area daily, harassing people. It is scary.”

Officers stopped the man when they saw him Friday on Sylvan between Oakdale and Coffee roads, Graves said. They spoke with him, she said, and “he appeared to be not 100 percent there mentally.” But he was not on probation or parole, had no weapons on him, provided his identification to officers and was not combative. There was nothing officers could arrest him for, Graves said.

The Police Department’s post generated “calls like crazy” to the department and hundreds of Facebook comments. One woman wrote that he knocked at her door at 9:30 at night. Another said he knocked at a door after dark asking for money and blankets. But others who encountered the man called him “chill” and “harmless.”

There were comments about finding him, or “hunting this fool down.” Such remarks generated replies including:

▪ “Call Facebook and have these postings removed if this person’s life is in danger and he is mentally ill or developmentally disabled.”

▪ “People are asking for street justice on this guy. All the ‘witness’ reports keep saying he is trying to break into homes and following women around. That in turn is causing the e-thugs to get up in arms about it.”

A post on Saturday describes what could have been moments before the assault: “I too saw this guy being chased by two individuals in black tee-shirts. He ran across Coffee heading towards the AMPM on Floyd. What I remember the most was the fear on his face as he ran into traffic.”

The people involved in Friday’s assault “shouldn’t have approached him at all,” Graves said Monday, because there is no indication he was a committing a crime or posing a threat to anyone at that particular time.

The reports police received earlier about the man regarded trespassing at businesses but came after the fact, she said.

Businesses and individuals should continue reporting his behavior, though, because “the more reports we receive, the more we have in the way of getting him help or arresting him,” Graves said. If he is aggressively panhandling, he can be prosecuted under the penal code, she said.

“So if we get several of these, we know it’s an issue,” Graves said.

In one shopping center, several businesses have banned him, she said, adding that she told one business owner, “we can get some sort of no-trespass letter; so if he’s on the property, that gives us teeth. We can just go there and arrest him.”

This story was originally published June 29, 2015 at 7:57 AM with the headline "Accused harasser in Coffee Road area is assaulted, police say."