An attack on a random woman in Lighthouse Point has landed a 55-year-old man in the Broward County Jail, police said.
Bernard Howard is charged with sexual battery.
Surveillance videos from several businesses along Federal Highway showed a man wearing a camouflage baseball cap on a blue bicycle with butterfly stickers on the frame. He is seen following a woman from the 1300 block of S. Federal Highway in Deerfield Beach to the 5300 block of N. Federal Highway in Lighthouse Point.
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According to the arrest report, he first approached her about 2 a.m. Aug. 29 outside a Cumberland Farms store but she kept walking south to a Sunoco gas station to get out of the rain. The man sat beside her and struck up a conversation. He kept trying to touch her, but she brushed him off.
The woman crossed Federal Highway to a liquor store, but he cut her off on his bicycle, tapped her on the shoulder then hit her, the report stated.
She went to police the next day and told them what happened.
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She said she “blacked out” briefly and when she awoke on the ground he was on top of her. He punched her in the face again and she “blacked out” a second time. When she regained consciousness, she was being sexually assaulted and choked before passing out again, investigators said.
The woman suffered a black eye, bruising and scratches around her neck, and a cut on her finger that required stitches, police said. She was taken to a sexual assault treatment center and then to her family.
When detectives returned to the scene of the attack, they said they found one of her shoes, the camouflage baseball cap and other evidence. They also recovered surveillance video from the Cumberland Farms store and the Sunoco that showed the man on the bike following the woman, as she described.
A Lighthouse Point Police officer spotted the blue bicycle with butterflies Aug. 31 and questioned Howard.
When an officer showed the woman a photo line-up, she picked Howard’s picture, walked to the corner of the room, fell to her knees shaking and became extremely upset, police said.
Howard was jailed Sept. 1 with a bond set at $75,000, records show.
