Vic snapped pic of 'subway molester' DEACON BUSTED IN TRAIN 'GROPE'
A Queens deacon who’s a married father of two was busted for allegedly groping a woman on a subway train — but his wife insists he’s innocent.
Police arrested 55-year-old Jaime Pinzon, an ordained deacon at St. Joan of Arc parish in Jackson Heights, on charges he molested a 27-year-old woman on an F Train near the Rockefeller Center station at around 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 12, court records show.
The accuser told cops that she tried to move away from him but that he continued to press his hand against her crotch, police sources said.
She was able to take cellphone photos of the man and even followed him when he got off the train at Herald Square, where she took another shot.
Cops disseminated the photos, and the public helped identify the deacon.
But Pinzon’s wife, Elma, said that her husband is innocent and that they learned of the accusations only after a member of their church community saw Pinzon’s photo on the news.
“I was shocked, of course,” she told The Post by phone Monday.
“Thursday night, it appeared on the news. Somebody sent us pictures. Everybody in our community started to call because my husband has 30 years’ serving in the church as a good person, an honorable person.”
He told her about the subway run-in but claimed that he did nothing and that the woman started accusing him for no reason, according to Elma.
“I told my husband, ‘Don’t worry about it, nothing will come of it,’ ” she said.
The wife claimed her husband turned himself in to police after his photo was distributed, but law-enforcement sources say they had to go to his home and arrest him.
“We talked to him and he was going to turn himself in,” a police source said. “He didn’t. So we scooped him up at home.”
Pinzon was arrested Dec. 15 at his home on 79th Street in Queens, according to sources.
He was charged with two counts of forcible touching and one count of sex abuse in the third degree, court records show. He was released without bail and is due back in court on Feb. 15.
Brooklyn Diocese spokeswoman Carolyn Erstad told The Post that Pinzon’s “faculties as a deacon have been suspended and he will not be ministering, pending the resolution of this charge.”
Parishioner Melanie Abel-bey said she found the allegations “shocking” but lauded the church for removing Pinzon.
“I think with the Catholic Church being scrutinized, they don’t want to get criticized that they’re trying to protect someone that is a potential predator,” she said.