Suspect Arrested In 2012 Sexual Assault Of Sleeping Woman On 4 Train

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- More than two years after a subway sex assault, a woman's alleged attacker has been arrested.

Elisa Lopez was asleep on a No. 4 train in October 2012 when she was assaulted, WCBS 880's Alex Silverman reported. She woke up, punched the man and ran off the train.

A bystander's cellphone video of the incident went viral on the Internet. But two years later, her attacker remained at large.

So she launched a social media campaign, #CatchTheAttacker. His face flooded Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.

"The thing that haunted me the most was the realization that people could've helped me," she says in written text on a YouTube video. "But didn't."

Last week, police arrested Carlos Chuva, 41, of Queens.

It's not clear if the campaign led directly to the arrest. But Lopez told DNAInfo.com that her campaign to catch the suspect "helped me get back that control."

It also helped spread the message to people in her shoes.

"The worst thing you can say is, 'It could've been worse.'" she says in her video. "It's OK to feel how you feel."