West Salem man arrested after allegedly masturbating in front of girl on city bus
Salem OR Dec 10 2017
A West Salem man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of masturbating in front of a 12-year-old girl on a Cherriots city bus.
It was Richard Joseph Wilson’s third time being arrested on public indecency charges in the past four months.
According to a probable cause statement, the girl was riding the bus from Wallace Road NW to the transit mall downtown on Nov. 30 when a man, later identified as Wilson, 40, boarded to bus and sat across from her.
She told police she noticed Wilson was staring at her. When she looked back, she saw he was stroking his exposed, erected penis.
The girl said she looked out the window and tried to ignore Wilson. Once the bus stopped, Wilson zipped up his pants, and the girl hurried off the bus.
She went home and told her mother, who then contacted Cherriots security about the incident. Security personnel reported the sex offense to Salem police.
While reviewing surveillance footage of the bus, a Salem officer noticed a man, whose lower body was blocked by a seat, watching the girl and moving his arms just outside of the camera’s view. When the victim exited the bus, the man was seen standing up and touching his groin.
Using a photo taken from the surveillance footage, the officer issued a department-wide attempt to locate memo. Two other officers later contacted him and identified the man as Wilson, a suspect in two other public indecency incidents earlier this year.
In August, a woman walking with her 8-year-old daughter along Senate Street in West Salem spotted Wilson sitting in a white SUV with his phone and masturbating.
When she hit the window of Wilson’s car and told him he needed to leave, he grabbed the gear shift, threw the SUV into reverse and sped off, according to court records.
The woman told police Wilson reversed at least 100 feet down the street until he struck a curb, which ricocheted his SUV into a parked car. The impact was so severe, it spun Wilson’s vehicle around.
Even though he had at least two flat tires, Wilson drove away from the scene.
After the woman contacted police, officers realized the man’s and vehicle’s description matched another indecent exposure incident reported in the area in July. Using the license plate number from the earlier case, police traced the vehicle to Wilson’s home on Glen Creek Road NW.
Officers found a damaged, white SUV parked in front of his home. Wilson told police he parked on Senate Street but denied masturbating. He said the witnesses were lying about him exposing himself. He admitted to hitting the curb, adding that he thought he hit trash cans, not a car.
Wilson was arrested and charged with two counts of public indecency and hit-and-run. He was released from jail on Aug. 31 and order to only use his vehicle if driving to work or driving with a “responsible adult.”
Wilson was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse in 1996 for an incident involving a girl under the age of 14. He was sentenced to four years and six months in prison and required to register as a sex offender.
Following his arrest Thursday, Wilson was taken to Polk County jail and held on $75,000 bail.
His next court appearance is scheduled for Dec. 14.
