A Somerville man accused of attacking a teenage girl in a Boston Museum of Science bathroom on Sunday was deemed too dangerous to be released from jail.
Yandri Hernandez, 24, was charged on Wednesday with kidnapping of a child, strangulation or suffocation and assault and battery, according to the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office. The decision to hold him in jail came after his dangerousness hearing on Friday.
What happened?
It was 12:41 p.m. on Sunday when state police got a call a 15-year-old girl had been assaulted in the museum’s bathroom, the district attorney’s office said.
The child told investigators she and a friend were on the first floor of the museum, and she went into the bathroom. As she left the stall to wash her hands at the sink, a hand clapped over her mouth.
She thought it was her friend but realized it was a man’s hand, the office said. The man said nothing as he tried to hold her from behind, she told investigators.
The girl was able to break free, screamed and ran out of the bathroom. The man walked out of the bathroom and fled, the office said.
A witness told police she saw a pair of black-and-white sneakers in a stall that appeared to be “abnormal in size for a female,” a statement from the office said. Both the first and the last stalls in the bathroom were occupied, and she heard both open their doors in short succession, she said.
Video footage showed Hernandez enter the museum in black-and-white sneakers and all-black clothes around 10:58 p.m., almost two hours before the suspected attack, the office said. He sat in the lobby near the bathroom for almost a full hour before going inside.
The day after the attack, Cambridge police informed troopers Hernandez was known to them and had a tattoo on his left forearm, the office said. He was seen in Somerville and arrested Tuesday.
“This is a terrifying incident for anyone, particularly for a teenager simply enjoying an outing with a friend at a popular destination,” District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement.
“This young woman’s description of her attacker, along with top-notch identification work based on the images disseminated by investigators, led to the defendant being spotted and arrested just days after the incident,” Hayden said.
