Philadelphia police are searching for a suspect they say has been wearing a Halloween mask and terrorizing women.<\/p>\n
No weapon is readily visible in publicly available images from the encounters, but police allege the suspect implied having one at one point.<\/p>\n
One woman said she refused to become a victim. When a masked stranger approached her in Center City last Wednesday morning, she squared up and kicked him in the chest.<\/p>\n
It happened around 5:15 a.m. near 15th and Broad streets.<\/p>\n
Jameka, who didn’t want to share her last name, believes the person who targeted her is the same suspect police say was caught on camera chasing a woman outside City Hall minutes earlier.<\/p>\n
Before her own encounter, Jameka said she spotted the masked suspect approaching a runner who was wearing earphones.<\/p>\n
“I started to wave at her from across the intersection and say, ‘Hey, there’s someone behind you,'” she said.<\/p>\n
She then witnessed him try to force his way into the La Colombe coffee shop before turning his attention towards her.<\/p>\n
“I figured that, if anything was going to happen, I wanted to see it with my own two eyes,” she said.<\/p>\n
Jameka said she turned around, screamed, yelled and put her hands up to fight, but something seemed off about the scary stranger.<\/p>\n
“He just seemed so disoriented about what his goals actually were,” she said. “I had bags. He wasn’t reaching for those. It didn’t seem like he had a clear goal to, like, actually get in La Colombe to do anything. So I was like, ‘Okay, well let’s see if you can fight … and he couldn’t.”<\/p>\n
Police said the suspect accosted several people in a 15-minute span.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia Police Department Capt. Jason Smith said he spoke to the runner. <\/p>\n
“He was holding his cell phone up in front of her at which time he asks her, ‘Are you ready to die?,'” Smith said.<\/p>\n
The man fled the scene.<\/p>\n
Jameka has a warning for others.<\/p>\n
“Make sure you’re not playing music in your headphones,” Jameka said. “Keep your keys in between your fingers. Just do everything you can to make sure you feel safe.”<\/p>\n
Police say the suspect, who has not been captured, could face several charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia police are searching for a suspect they say has been wearing a Halloween mask and terrorizing women.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11162,31,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-267586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-caught-on-camera","tag-crime","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}