THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409220598
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
Parents in the city's East End expressed fear and outrage after learning that another girl had been attacked on the way to her morning school bus stop.
As nervous mothers and fathers waited on a street corner Wednesday to gather up their children from the afternoon bus and shepherd them home, police were canvassing the neighborhood, handing out fliers and alerting residents that an attacker was in their midst.
Could it be, parents asked, that the man who sexually assaulted up to a dozen girls in the same neighborhood had returned to the streets he haunted three years ago?
Police are considering that possibility but are focusing more on two early morning sexual assaults on girls in May. Those assaults bear many similarities to Wednesday's attack, said police spokesman Bill Roth.
The cases in May involved a man who grabbed and fondled girls on their way to morning bus stops.
On Wednesday, a 14-year-old student at Hines Middle School was walking to catch the bus when a man approached her from behind, made sexual comments and pulled her between two houses.
But a pair of barking dogs nearby alerted a neighbor, who scared the man off when he stepped outside to check on the commotion, Roth said.
``I just think it's sad,'' said Thurman Leonard, 33, as his hands gripped his 7-year-old daughter's shoulders moments after she stepped off her bus. ``We live in a community where we can't even send our kids to school without getting attacked.''
Patricia Whitehead, another parent who regularly escorts her three children to and from their bus stops, pledged even greater diligence. Her 5-year-old son, George III, catches the bus only a few doors from the scene of the attack.
KEYWORDS: ASSAULT SEX CRIME CHILD MOLESTER by CNB