NASA Checks Store Sex Tape
Police in West Virginia are consulting with their counterparts in Kentucky about similar sexual assaults on young girls in busy discount stores.
Police in the Charleston, W.Va., area have been talking to police in Ashland, Kentucky, to see if the cases are linked.
In suburban Charleston, police say a man pretending to be a security guard sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl at a Target store. The suspect was caught on tape by the store camera.
A day earlier in Kentucky, a 9-year-old girl said she was patted down by a man who said he was a security guard at a Wal-Mart in Ashland. Police there say the girl's description of the man is similar to the man who was caught on the West Virginia tape.
West Virginia police have asked NASA to enhance the videotape, and are checking tape from other area stores to see if the suspect turns up. Police in Kentucky are looking through the Wal-Mart store's surveillance video.
The videotape has prompted more than 100 phone tips, but no solid leads, reports CBS News Correspondent Bob Orr.
"It's really hard to see a face, and this guy could look like a lot of guys so therefore we're getting a lot of real general 'this looks like my ex-brother in law or whatever,'" said South Charleston police detective Jane Turley.
The West Virginia tape showed the suspect, who posed as a security guard, talking to an 11-year-old girl and then walking quickly down an aisle in another department, leading the child by her wrist.
"The little girl was shopping in the video/CD section of the store, and the subject approached her and ... told the girl that she needed to come with him to speak to her about a possible shoplifting," Yeager said on CBS News' Early Show. "From that point, he led her to a secluded area of the store, where he began to assault this young girl."
The suspect is described as "about 5-feet-9-inches to 5-feet-10-inches, approximately 200 pounds, white male with sandy-colored hair. Sort of a muscular build with somewhat of a belly on him."
The assault started in the garden department, then continued in the men's clothing department, while her mother shopped in another area of the store.
"He originally took her to one area of the store," Yeager told Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "And for whatever reason, then took her by the arm and led her to another area, where I guess he felt more comfortable."
In the Kentucky incident on Friday, a 9-year-old girl who had wandered away from her mother was approached by a man who identified himself as a security guard. The man patted the girl down, and she became suspicious and ran to her mother.
Kentucky authorities now are searching through their own surveillance tape and may seek to match up any findings with whatever images the NASA lab can refine.
South Charleston and Ashland are just over an hour, or 60 miles, apart.