A 22-year-old man accused of groping women’s breasts in south-end Halifax over the last few months was arraigned on five sex charges in court yesterday.
With his clean-cut looks, blue American Eagle T-shirt, and muscular build, Douglas James Roy Schrader could’ve passed for any one of the thousands of university students in Halifax.
Police arrested Schrader of 281 Windmill Rd., Dartmouth Wednesday night following two incidents earlier that evening.
Police say a man groped a 29-year-old woman as she was getting her mail inside a Tobin Street apartment building at 6:30 p.m.
Halifax regional police spokesman Const. Jeff Carr said a man came up behind her and groped her breast and buttocks.
“He implied he thought she was somebody else and then groped her again,” Carr said.
Less than an hour later, a 32-year-old woman got on the elevator of her Church Street apartment building with a man who started talking to her and then fondled her breasts.
The incidents follow several more similarly disturbing assaults on women in the same part of town.
On June 16, a woman on South Bland Street answered a knock to her apartment door and was greeted by a man who was masturbating.
A woman walking on the sidewalk near the same area was groped on May 22.
And a few days prior to that, a man asked a woman entering her Tobin Street apartment building if she dropped her I.D. card, while at the same time grabbing her breasts.
Schrader is due back in court today to set a date for a bail hearing. He faces four sexual assault charges and one charge for masturbating in public.
