Sex offender stalked mom and 12-year-old in Target's youth swimsuit section, NJ cops say
David Hohsfield, a registered sex offender in New Jersey, had a similar routine for stalking moms and their young daughters, police say.
He did it to a mother and her 12-year-old daughter while they shopped in a local Target on May 4, according to a Facebook post from the Howell Township Police Department. He followed the duo around the store's youth swimsuit section, police say, and made sexual comments directed toward the preteen.
Police say he pretended to be chatting with someone on his Bluetooth earpiece while making the vulgar remarks, but the girl realized what was happening. She told her mom, who alerted security, but it was too late — the man had already left the store.
It wasn't long before cops started receiving similar reports, they say.
An 11-year-old girl said a man continued to follow her in a TJ Maxx on the same day, police allege, and pretended to talk on a Bluetooth while making sexual comments. That store is on the same shopping plaza as the Target.
According to a screenshot from ShoreNewsNetwork, a woman wrote on the Howell Happenings NJ Group Page that an "old man" continued to follow her, her mom and her young sister while they shopped in the same Target as the 12-year-old.
The man would walk up to the woman's sister whenever her family stepped a few feet away, she wrote, but would stop and just smile at the girl whenever her sister or mom got close again. The woman wrote that she told her mom, who followed the man and noticed that he had moved on to stalking another mother and her child.
The girl's mother went up to a Target manager, who said they had received similar complaints about the alleged stalker in the past, the woman wrote, according to ShoreNewsNetwork.
And a final report came on May 7, when a 12-year-old girl said a man did the same thing to her while she was shopping in a Walmart, according to police. After an investigation, Hohsfield was arrested on May 9 and faces eight counts of harassment.
Hohsfield — a tier 3 sexual offender, the highest level possible in New Jersey — is being held in the Monmouth County Correctional Institution.
Many on Facebook posted messages of gratitude on the police Facebook page, including Noelle Marie Battle.
"Thank you to Howell PD," she wrote, "and thank you to the ladies who posted their encounters on our Howell site so we could be more cautious!"
Chief Andrew Kudrick Jr. wrote that his officers knew they had to work quickly to catch the suspect.
“Due to the nature of these incidents, we knew we had a dangerous person in our community," he wrote. "As such, it was our top priority to identify and apprehend this person. My officers did an outstanding job doing so.
"This quick resolution potentially prevented a more serious outcome to others.”
This story was originally published May 10, 2018 at 10:04 AM with the headline "Sex offender stalked mom and 12-year-old in Target's youth swimsuit section, NJ cops say."