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Police: Capture Of Peeping Tom Was A Group Effort

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TBO.com

Published: January 9, 2009

Updated: 01/09/2009 05:18 pm

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Philomino Ramirez Gonzalez

TAMPA - At first, 45-year-old Marco Assuncau thought the screaming going on two blocks north of his home was just kids goofing around.

"The second scream," he said, "and I knew somebody was in trouble."

Assuncau, emerged from his yard on North Tampa Street just south of Linebaugh Avenue and peered into the darkness just after 8 p.m. Thursday.

"I saw somebody grabbing somebody else," he said. Punches were thrown; muffled screams indicated a hand was over someone's mouth.

"I hollered, 'What's going on,' " Assuncau said Friday afternoon. He said the two separated. One, a teenage girl, fled to a nearby convenience store, he said. Assuncau ran up to the second person, a man. He didn't run; he didn't fight, Assuncau said.

"He was bad, bad drunk," Assuncau said. Police arrived about 15 minutes later and arrested Philomino Ramirez Gonzalez, 25, a homeless man whose troubles were just beginning.

Moments before his run-in with Assuncau, Ramirez-Gonzalez was being chased by three men in a neighborhood to the south, along Hamiller Avenue, police said. The neighbors had seen him peering through the windows of two houses, including one where two children were undressing for a bath, police said.

"I was sitting outside," said 50-year-old Edgardo Lozano, who lives on the south side of the street. "I saw him walking down the street and look into my neighbor's window; then he walked next door and looked into that window."

Neighbors alerted Tammy Perez that Ramirez-Gonzalez was snooping around her home.

"My husband and all the neighbors here started running down the road, taking up after him," she said.

They chased the man east on Hamiller and then north on Tampa Street.

Daniel Perez, who said his 12-year-old daughter and 7-year-old niece were the ones being spied on, said the voyeur disappeared into the shadows along Tampa Street.

Daniel Perez said he doesn't know what he would have done had he caught the man. "I can't tell you that," said Perez, 42. "But I was going after him."

Ramirez-Gonzalez has been charged with kidnapping, loitering and voyeurism and was in Orient Road Jail today. Bail had not been set.

Police confirm the story told by the neighbors, adding that the victim of the attack on Tampa Street was a 15-year-old girl who was out walking with her 10-year-old friend. Her mother was walking nearby, Tampa Police Department spokeswoman Andrea Davis said.

"Typically, we tell people not to take the law into their own hands," Davis said. "But had it not been for these people, this guy would be out on the street tonight."

Reporter Josh Poltilove and photographer Julie Busch contributed to this report. Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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