Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto has promised to add bicycle patrol officers after a third woman has accused a Spring Garden man of grabbing her on the Allegheny River trail on the North Side.
Pittsburgh police on Thursday charged 19-year-old Robert Flynn with criminal attempt, indecent assault and harassment. Flynn remains jailed on previous charges.
In the latest case, a woman told police she was walking with her husband about 9 p.m. Sept. 1 when she felt something pulling at her shorts. She said she looked down and saw a crouching man who let go and ran away, according to the criminal complaint.
She and her husband both identified Flynn from a photo array.
Police already accused Flynn of lifting up a woman's skirt and brushing her buttock as she walked to work underneath the 16th Street Bridge on Sept. 2, and pulling down the shorts of a deputy U.S. marshal while she jogged along the trail later that day.
The marshal identified herself and chased Flynn, attacking him when he tried to charge her, police said.
Channel 11’s Alan Jennings talked to joggers Friday who said they’d love to see efforts to make the trial safer.
“I run to the very end of the trail and there’s no body down there. There’s no security and no phones,” Chris Anthony said.
Anthony said she runs 13 miles every day on the trail, but ever since the first alleged attack, she doesn’t feel safe.
“Since that incident that was on the news, no (I don’t feel safe),” she said.
Anthony said she’s worried someone else could try to copy what Flynn is accused of doing.
"My girlfriend runs on that trail and it’s something that I’ve heard firsthand about how there are concerns about safety,” Anthony said.
PITTSBURGH — Channel 11’s news exchange partners at TribLIVE contributed to this report.
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