Source: APBnews
By: Scott A. Pignone
(ORLANDO, FL) — Authorities are searching for a man who is squirting young girls in department stores with a semen-filled water gun and then taking their photographs.
The suspect may have been involved in up to 11 attacks over the past few months, police said.
The man usually steals a water gun from the store, fills it with water mixed with semen and then squirts it in the face of girls walking alone, police said.
During his most recent attack Saturday, the man approached an unattended girl at an area Kmart and asked her to open her mouth, said Sgt. Orlando Rolon, an Orlando police spokesman. When she refused, the man took out a fish-shaped water gun, sprayed the mixture on her and took her photograph.
Suspect’s composite sketch released
The mixture got in the girl’s eye and caused irritation. Paramedics took her to an area hospital, police said.
"The girl is mentally shaken up, but she’s doing fine," Rolon said.
After seeing television reports of the attack, other parents told police that a man had been following their children around the store, police said.
Police have released a composite sketch.
In all of the cases, the man has fled from the scene before store officials, parents or police have been able to get a good look at him. Witnesses say he has brownish hair, is 5 feet 11 to 6 feet 1 inches tall and weighs approximately 160 pounds, police said.
Court will likely order AIDS test
The incidents occur mainly at discount department stores and have primarily occurred at Kmarts and Wal-Marts in the metropolitan Orlando area, Rolon said.
In a February incident, the man allegedly snatched a girl, who was waiting for her parents, squirted her with the mixture and fled the scene, police said.
Police have obtained a DNA sample from his previous attacks. They are currently running the sample against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s DNA data bank, which contains samples from convicted sex offenders.
They said they have been unable to test the material for the AIDS virus because of technical difficulties, Rolon said. However, if the suspect is caught, the court will likely order an HIV test, Rolon said.
‘It’s certainly worrisome’
Jeffrey Danziger, an Orlando forensic psychiatrist, who specializes in court ordered mental examinations of defendants, said that this type of behavior is worrisome.
"I’ve been in practice for 18 years and seen hundreds of sexual offenders for the courts and never seen anything like this," Danziger told APBnews.com. "It makes me wonder if we’re looking at someone who might be delusional or psychotic."
"It’s certainly worrisome that he’s squirting bodily fluids on children that are alone," he added.
Danziger said that two possibilities exist as to the man’s motives.
A sexual fetish or mission?
"The first possibility is that this is someone with a strange sexual fetish," Danziger said. "In a sex fetish, people derive their sexual pleasure not from the normal outlets but with something that involves an object or placing a person into a certain situation."
If this is a sexual fetish, Danziger said, the man might be a pedophile.
"That suggests that it’s even more twisted and an even more grosser violation of society’s norms," he said.
The other possibility is that the man is psychotic.
"This is a guy that has some sort of delusional thinking that involves children," Danziger said. "Who knows, maybe he believes that squirting them with his semen will do something for them or he believes that he’s on some sort of mission. It’s hard to say because it’s so bizarre."
A psychotic suffers from hallucinations, delusions or a disturbance in the flow of thought, Danziger said. To a layperson, it may mean someone who is disconnected from reality, he explained.
Attacks may be escalating
Danziger compared the suspect’s behavior with that of an exhibitionist.
"If you look at squirting people with something, it might be akin to an exhibitionist; the idea is to inspire shock or humiliation or distress in other people," Danziger said. "That’s what gives them their sexual pleasure, and later they go home and reflect upon it to derive joy from what happened.
"This may be the pattern," he added.
It is also worrisome that the man may escalate his attacks, Danziger said.
"Violent sex offenders start as nonviolent sex offenders and progress," he said. "Most rapists may have started as a Peeping Tom and they progress to violence. However, [there are] many sex offenders who never progress to violence. Many exhibitionists stay exhibitionists and don’t progress."
Due to the nature of the crime, police will only be able to charge the suspect with simple battery, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum one year in jail.
Persons with information about the suspect are asked to call the Orlando Police Department’s Sex Crimes Unit at (407) 246-2425.
