Safety concerns are on the rise in Wareham, Massachusetts, after an encounter at the city's target, where a woman said that a man recorded her while she was in the fitting room.
The man arrested, 37-year-old Gregory Mattos of Mashpee, was charged with a similar crime in this same shopping plaza nine years ago.
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WATCH HEREThe young woman says she was trying on bathing suits in the fitting room, at the Target store in the Wareham Crossing shopping plaza Monday afternoon. She told police she noticed a black cellphone being held over the fitting room door, as she was completely undressed.
“It was creepy and scary. I noticed um, a phone above the wall," she told NBC10 Boston over the phone.
"He could have harmed her physically and the dressing room is pretty isolated, so I’m glad all he did was film her," her mother added.
Police pulled surveillance video from the store and a manager told police he recognized the man with the cellphone as a “...frequent customer who often lingered near the fitting rooms occasionally ‘for hours’.”
Officers found a man fishing nearby who fit the description of the man who had been recording the victim.
According to court records, when officers asked him if he had been at Target, he acknowledged he was, and then blurted out, “I wasn’t filming any females in the fitting room.”
Officers hadn’t even told him yet why they were questioning him.
Police arrested Mattos and charged him with photographing an unsuspecting nude person.
Mattos is a registered sex offender who was arrested for a similar upskirting crime back in 2016 at the Rue 21 store in the same shopping plaza.
The young woman and her mother don’t want to be identified, but in an exclusive interview with NBC10 Boston, they tell us the whole situation was terrifying.
In a statement, Target said in part, “We have robust procedures, policies and training in place to ensure that our stores are safe places to shop and work. We have zero tolerance for this type of behavior…”
Mattos pleaded not guilty in Wareham District Court Tuesday and was placed on $5,000 cash bail. He was ordered to stay away from Target and the victim. He’s due back in court on June 30.
