Man exposes himself in South Capitol neighborhood

Police won’t say if he’s the ‘creep’

SANTA FE — There’s been yet another case of a man exposing himself in Santa Fe’s South Capitol neighborhood, but police won’t say if they suspect this offender was involved in prior incidents.

A woman told Santa Fe Police that she was driving west on Berger Street near the intersection with Don Gaspar around 12:30 a.m. Thursday.

She saw an Anglo man in his 20s with blond wavy hair, wearing cargo shorts and a dark T-shirt, masturbating in the street while looking into a house’s window on Don Gaspar, according to an SFPD report. She said she drove to a nearby friend’s house and immediately called police.

Police stopped a man who was walking in the neighborhood, but the woman told officers that he wasn’t the suspect.

SFPD spokesman Greg Gurule said police won’t speculate whether this is the same man who has been terrorizing women in the neighborhood over the past year and whom residents have dubbed the South Capitol Creep. That perpetrator is said to have an athletic build, possibly with an abdominal “six pack,” a crew cut and the ability to scale walls quickly.

Police have not publicly linked a series of other recent incidents with the “creep.”

On July 29, SFPD took a report from a woman on Berger Street who said that a man was standing outside her car window and told her she was beautiful, and that he was masturbating. She said she couldn’t see what he was doing, a brief SFPD report says. Police have not provided additional information on this case because it’s still under investigation.

Officers took three other similar reports that same weekend, none of them in South Capitol. At about 1:10 p.m. July 28, a woman said she saw a man masturbating in a small alley across from Acequia Madre Elementary School. She said he fled in a white Volkswagen Jetta with a turquoise license plate.

On July 29, a resident on Los Pinones Street, near Old Santa Fe Trail and East Zia, said a man was possibly masturbating with his pants down while leaning against a car on the road. Later that day, a woman reported that a man exposed himself to her on North Guadalupe Street near Paseo de Peralta.

Police have said they believe one man is responsible for four “creep” incidents reported last summer and again earlier this year in the South Capitol area. In those cases, a man described as athletic and slim invaded homes or yards and touched women or exposed himself before running away.