PDF: Groping arrest
A Trenton, Ga., man was arrested Wednesday by Dalton police and charged in connection with the groping of two women in July and offering a woman $100 Tuesday to expose her breasts.
Jonathan A. Barry, 20, is charged with two counts of sexual battery and one count of simple assault. All the incidents were reported in Dalton.
He was being held on a $15,000 bond Wednesday at the Whitfield County Jail, said Misty Kovach, an administrative technician. Barry has no prior charges in Whitfield County, records show.
Police said the first incident occurred July 18 in the parking lot of the TJ Maxx store off Walnut Avenue.
A man approached a woman as she was leaving the store and asked if he could ask her a question, Dalton police spokesman Bruce Frazier said. When she stopped, the man pulled her top down and exposed her breasts before running away, he said.
On July 22, a man approached two women leaving Belk at Walnut Square Mall and asked one of them to stop so he could ask her a question, Frazier said. He grabbed her breast when she stopped and then he ran away, he said.
The third incident happened Tuesday, Frazier said. A man offered a woman $100 to expose her breasts in the Walmart parking lot off East Walnut Avenue.
Frazier attributed the arrest to surveillance images circulated by the media and tips stemming from a “better” image taken after Tuesday’s incident.
Detectives followed up on leads and obtained a warrant on Wednesday, Frazier said. He said Barry was found at someone else’s residence.
Police said the three incidents likely are the only related ones that have occurred.
“We don’t necessarily believe there have been other cases,” Frazier said. “If it happened to somebody else, they probably would have called in.”
None of the women was under 16, Frazier said, but he didn’t know their exact ages.
Frazier said the charges are classified in Georgia as “high aggravated misdemeanor(s)” and that they would have been considered felonies had the women been under 16.
“I don’t really know that we’ve had anything like this one before,” he said.