A Pratt student’s sketch led to the arrest of an ex-con who was violating the terms of his probation. The New York Daily News reports that a 21-year-old woman noticed an older man, Christopher Thomas, lurking the hallways of Pratt last Thursday where he allegedly exposed himself and masturbated. The woman drew a quick sketch and reported the incident.
The sketch looks nothing like Thomas, but the story spread:
She reported the incident and word spread. A wood shop professor at the university recalled she had seen Thomas in the building earlier and recognized him as someone she had gone out to a restaurant with several months earlier.
The professor had a business card that Thomas gave her with his alias, Christopher Reiss, and cops tracked him down. He was on supervised release at the time after serving a prison term for fraud.
His lewd act wasn’t caught on surveillance camera, but he was seen entering and exiting the campus. Federal prosecutor Alicyn Cooley suggested that Thomas returned to visit the professor he had met for lunch. The evidence and testimony was enough for a judge to send Thomas back to jail for four months.
(Photo: New York Daily News)
