LORAIN — A Lorain woman told police a man forced her 6-year-old daughter into his apartment and tried to take her clothes off yesterday afternoon.
Arce
Eliseo Arce, 56, of Lorain, is in the Lorain City Jail without bond facing an abduction charge, according to a police report.
The woman, 35, told police she was in front of her apartment building at 1906 Lexington Ave. with her daughter and told her daughter to run inside and get her cell phone.
After her daughter was gone for about five minutes, the woman thought she was taking too long, so she opened the apartment building door and saw her daughter running up the stairs.
Her daughter then told her the following happened:
As she was making her way to her apartment, she was grabbed from behind by a man, later determined to be Arce. He put his hand over her mouth and carried her into his apartment. Once in the apartment he took her through the living room to a back bedroom.
The girl said the man then attempted to pull her shorts down but stopped when she waved her hands back and forth signaling him to stop. She said said he stopped pulling on her shorts and then tried to lift up her T-shirt.
She said someone then knocked on the bedroom window, and Arce told her “Run, get out of here.”
That is when the girl ran from the apartment and told her mother what had happened.
As police were speaking with the girl’s mother, Arce rode up on a bicycle and asked “You guys looking for me?”
When police responded, “No, why?” he replied “Oh, heard you were, something about me grabbing a little girl.”
Police then searched the Arce’s apartment, and it matched up with the girl’s description that he had two cats and that the TV was on in the back bedroom she had been taken too.
The man who had knocked on the window told police he is a friend of Arce and was there to give him a ride to the store.
According to Lorain police Sgt. Mark Carpentiere, the incident remains under investigation, and it’s possible more charges could be filed.
