Thread: Police: Mall slashing suspect fled to Peru

washingtonpost.com
By Justin Jouvenal
Posted at 02:30 PM ET, 12/28/2011

The man wanted in a bizarre series of buttock slashings that targeted young women at busy Fairfax County shopping malls has fled to his native Peru, police said Wednesday.


Johnny D. Guillen Pimentel (COURTESY OF FAIRFAX COUNTY POLICE)

Authorities are exploring whether Johnny D. Guillen Pimentel, 40, can be extradited to stand trial in this country, but so far he has not been taken into custody, said Lucy Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax County police.

“We are aware that he has been seen there,” Caldwell said. “We are working with Peruvian officials to determine whether or not we can bring him back to the United States.”

Caldwell said Guillen Pimentel arrived in Peru around mid-December, but said it was unclear whether he had traveled there directly from the United States, or how he had left this country. He is believed to be staying in the nation’s capital, Lima.

In September, Fairfax County police issued a warrant for Guillen Pimentel’s arrest in one of the attacks, and asked for the public’s help in locating the former Fairfax resident. Authorities have said they suspect he slashed nine women in their teens and early 20s between February and July at Fair Oaks Mall, Tysons Corner Center and other locations.

Pimentel would allegedly distract the women, cut their buttocks with a razor blade or box cutter, and then melt away into crowds. No one was seriously injured, but the strange, random attacks drew widespread media attention and prompted police to form a task force to track down the culprit.

Police still do not have a motive for the slashings, but Guillen Pimentel’s brother told the Post in September that his brother was not known to be violent or aggressive. The brother said Guillen Pimentel had worked as a day laborer and has a young son.

Guillen Pimentel’s arrival in Peru generated blaring headlines in a number of media outlets, which dubbed him “corta nalgas,” or buttocks slasher. Some have used actors to stage re-enactments of Pimentel’s alleged crimes.

Interpol Lima officials said they were waiting for additional information before commenting on Pimentel’s case. Officials at the Peruvian embassy in Washington were researching the case Wednesday afternoon.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said they could not comment on whether Pimentel had flown from the United States to Peru, citing passenger privacy rules. The agency checks passenger manifests for all flights leaving the United States against a database of outstanding warrants to prevent fugitives from leaving the country.

Staff writer Allison Klein contributed to this report.

By Justin Jouvenal | 02:30 PM ET, 12/28/2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...PnMP_blog.html

nationalreview.com
By Mark Krikorian
December 29, 2011 3:17 P.M

I don’t know how much national attention it got, but earlier this year there were a spate of attacks in Northern Virginia where a man would slash a young woman’s buttocks in a department store or mall and then run off. The injuries were superficial but the randomness (not to mention weirdness) of it caused a lot of concern, kind of like a farcical replay of the Beltway Sniper shootings in 2002.

Anyway, we learn today from the Washington Post that the suspect has fled to his native Peru. Now, this doesn’t tell us anything about immigration in general, because there are perverts and criminals in any large population. But while the WaPo seems to have studiously avoided reporting on his immigration status, it looks like he was an illegal alien, from this September report when he was named as the suspect: “Guillen Pimentel, a former Fairfax resident, came to the United States from Peru eight or nine years ago, has worked as a day laborer.” Obviously, if we did a better job at keeping out illegals, he wouldn’t have been able to commit these attacks, but that’s a pretty diffuse point.

The matter that specifically relates to policy is this, from the same September story: “Court records show that Guillen Pimentel has had a minor run-in with police. In 2007, he was convicted of a noise violation, according to court records.”

Maybe they checked his immigration status then and found he was legal — if you’re able to find evidence of that, let me know. But I suspect what happened was that they didn’t check him for immigration status (Fairfax County only started Secure Communities in 2009). This was a lost opportunity, because pretty much all serious criminals start their careers with a “minor run-in with the police.” If you can identify those who are illegal aliens, you can expel them before they start attacking women with razor blades.

This is why all people in all jurisdictions who are arrested and fingerprinted need to be checked not only against the FBI’s records but also against immigration. The Obama administration is, in fact, continuing to expand the Bush-era program to do just that. But just as important, DHS needs to build the capacity to deport all the illegals reported to them by the police; that is something the current administration has said it will not do under any circumstances, openly announcing that only a small share of illegal aliens arrested by local police will face deportation. Note that these are people who have been arrested who are exempt from deportation, not some hapless schmoe who made an illegal left turn. Even assaulting a police officer, breaker and entering, and resisting arrest “aren’t necessarily serious enough to warrant deportation under current policy” according to an ICE spokesman earlier this year commenting on another case. But if we wait til they graduate to rape or murder before deporting them, we are unnecessarily endangering our own people. But then maybe this crowd doesn’t consider public safety to be the first responsibility of government.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner...mark-krikorian

Here's how WaPo reported it last Sept.:

washingtonpost.com
By Justin Jouvenal and Ruben Castaneda, Published: September 7


The man slipped behind young women in some of Fairfax County’s busiest shopping malls. He’d distract them, slash at their buttocks with a razor or box cutter, then dart off into the crowd.


Fairfax police said they may finally have identified the mysterious slasher — but as of Wednesday evening, they had not found him. Johnny D. Guillen Pimentel, 40, may have fled the area weeks ago, police said.


( COURTESY OF FAIRFAX COUNTY POLICE ) - Johnny D. Guillen Pimentel


Guillen Pimentel, a former Fairfax resident, came to the United States from Peru eight or nine years ago, has worked as a day laborer and has a young son, according to his older brother, Edgar Rolando Guillen Pimentel.


Edgar Guillen Pimentel said he has not seen his brother in two months and doesn’t know where he is. He has not known his brother to be violent or aggressive, but he said Johnny Guillen Pimentel had a difficult breakup with the mother of his child about two years ago.


Edgar Guillen Pimentel said police have searched his Fairfax home and questioned him.
“I’d like to know if there is something going on in his mind. It pains me that someone in my family is accused of doing this,” Edgar Guillen Pimentel said in Spanish. “We are a humble, hardworking family.”


Johnny Guillen Pimentel is wanted in connection with one attack — on a warrant charging him with malicious wounding — but police have said they think the same man has cut nine women in their teens or early 20s since February.


None of the women were seriously injured, but the random slashings unnerved shoppers and authorities alike, and they drew widespread media attention. Police said the motive for the attacks remain a mystery and declined to release additional information about Guillen Pimentel, saying it could harm the investigation.


“The public and their assistance is crucial to cases such as this,” said Lucy Caldwell, a Fairfax police spokeswoman. “We believe we identified a suspect and are going back to the public to help locate him.”


Police said Johnny Guillen Pimentel might be driving a blue 2003 Honda Civic with the Virginia license plate KLX2689.


The attacker’s image was captured by surveillance cameras and was widely distributed by Washington area news outlets, including The Washington Post, when it was released by police several weeks ago. Initial tips about the man’s identity did not immediately pan out, but the pace of tips increased as the number of known incidents grew, police said.


Caldwell said the break in the search came after someone saw a police flier about the slashings in a store and “recently” called police. She did not have specifics.


Court records show that
Guillen Pimentel has had a minor run-in with police. In 2007, he was convicted of a noise violation, according to court records. At the time, his address was listed as in the 9400 block of Lee Highway in Fairfax, but he no longer lives there, a current resident said.


The most recent slashing occurred July 25 at Fair Oaks Mall. An 18-year-old woman who was shopping at XXI Forever about 5:30 p.m. noticed a man bending over to pick up some clothes that had fallen off a rack, police said.


Suddenly, the woman felt a sharp pain, but she thought it was a hanger poking her. Then she saw her denim shorts were torn and her buttocks were bleeding. The cut was an inch and a half long.


Four other victims were also cut at Fair Oaks Mall, where one of the first known attacks happened on Valentine’s Day, police said. Two other incidents occurred at H&M at Tysons Corner, one was reported at Marshalls at the Greenbriar Shopping Center and another at T.J. Maxx at Fairfax Towne Center.


All the attacks occurred in the afternoon or evening, when the malls were crowded, police said.


Fairfax police had stationed additional officers at retail centers across the county in an effort to deter the attacker and formed a task force in August. On Wednesday, police shared information about Guillen Pimentel with surrounding jurisdictions, although there have been no reports of slashings outside the county.


One of the slasher’s first victims, a 20-year-old woman from Northern Virginia, told The Post in July that she was left shaken by the incident. She said she was heading for an exit at Fair Oaks Mall on Valentine’s Day when a man suddenly ran up and cut her buttocks. He was carrying a shopping bag, she said.


“I thought he was grabbing me at first, and then I felt my skin. I was like, ‘You just ripped my leggings!’ ” said the woman, who is not being identified because she is a crime victim. “He said, ‘No, no, no — it was the bag,’ and ran away really fast.”




Staff researchers Jennifer Jenkins and Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

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