LEWISTON – A Blake Street man accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl on Saturday followed the child around for hours before attacking her behind a downtown store, according to a police affidavit released on Tuesday.
The alleged victim of the attack said Raul Castro Zepeda, 43, of 176 Blake St., followed her through a store, watched her walk home, and later confronted her in Kennedy Park.
Zepeda is charged with gross sexual assault. Police said he jumped on the girl as she tried to run away from him at about 2:50 p.m. Saturday. The victim told police the man tried to kiss her face and breasts and that he put his hands beneath her bathing suit bottom.
Police said the girl was able to free herself and run home after a group of people rushed to the area and yelled at Zepeda to stop. The same group of people held on to Zepeda until police arrived and he was arrested.
Investigators who later talked with the girl were told that Zepeda had been watching her throughout the day. According to the affidavit, the girl said she was inside a Blake Street variety store at about 9 a.m. when she first noticed the stranger watching her very closely.
“… this made her feel very uncomfortable,” it states in the affidavit prepared by Lewiston police officer Timothy Darnell. “This male also asked her to come over to him and stated that he would give her twenty dollars if she did.”
Instead, the girl had another man walk her to her home a short distance away. Later, according to the affidavit, she said she spotted the same man watching her as she went to the same store.
The girl told police that in the early afternoon, she went to Trinity Church at Bates and Spruce streets to have lunch. She later went to Kennedy Park and stopped at the pool. It was while walking home from the park that she spotted Zepeda again, this time leaning against a tree near Bates and Spruce streets.
The girl said the man spoke to her but she was unable to hear what was said. She began walking down Bates Street toward Maple when she noticed the man was following her. The girl said she tried to get away from the man by cutting across a parking lot and taking a shortcut behind a different store near her home.
“Before she was able to get to the path, she slipped to the ground and landed on her back,” Darnell wrote. “This was where the male was able to get on top of her.”
The witnesses who interrupted the attack told police that Zepeda was on top of the girl and that her bathing suit had been pulled down when they arrived. When Zepeda obeyed commands to get off the girl, she pulled up her bathing suit and ran away, police said.
According to the affidavit, Zepeda told one of the witnesses that the alleged victim of the attack was his girlfriend but that he did not know her age.
According to court records, Zepeda has a previous history of sex crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was wanted for a sex assault in Arkansas.
Zepeda was being held at the Androscoggin County Jail Tuesday on $100,000 bail.
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