STAMFORD - A janitor at the Stamford train station was charged Thursday with secretly videotaping at least 16 women in a bathroom stall with a cell phone taped to a roll of toilet paper.
Felicitos Gonzalez, 41, of 1 Division St., Apartment R, Stamford, was arrested by Metropolitan Transportation Authority police at his home a block away from the train station Wednesday.
Gonzalez was arraigned on 16 counts of voyeurism at state Superior Court in Stamford Thursday.
Judge Barbara Brazzel-Massaro ruled that Gonzalez, a Mexican native working in the country illegally, will be jailed in lieu of $50,000 bond for the Class D felony.
Gonzalez' defense attorney Howard Ehring said his client had little chance, if any of raising the money
A court translator reviews information for Felicitos Gonzalez during his arraignment on voyeurism charges Thursday at state Superior Court in Stamford. (Dru Nadler/Staff photo)
to bond out.
Gonzalez' arrest by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority came after a 21-year-old woman used the ladies bathroom near the Dunkin' Donuts on the main floor of the train station late in the evening on Nov. 1, Gonzalez' arrest warrant says.
When the woman picked her book bag up off the floor, she tipped over a red plastic waste basked that contained five or six toilet paper rolls, she told police. As she picked up the rolls to place them back in the basket, one of the rolls felt heavy and started to beep, the warrant states.
"I ripped the toilet paper off of the roll and noticed that a camera phone had been taped to the roll. I turned the camera around and looked at the screen and noticed that it was recording the bathroom stall," she said in her witness statement to the MTA.
The woman then got on the 11:30 p.m. train to Grand Central Station. Along the way she began looking at the recordings on the phone and found a video clip of a male Hispanic man wearing a green shirt as he set the phone into a stationary position and placed toilet rolls around it, the warrant said.
The woman also saw recordings of two other women going to the bathroom before turning off the phone, the warrant said.
Two days later the woman reported the camera to a police officer at a road job and he told her to call MTA police. That same day on Nov. 3 she talked to MTA Detective Sean Connolly about the phone and turned over the phone, which still had toilet paper taped around it, according to the warrant.
The next day a property manager for Fusco Management, which runs the train station, reviewed the video recordings and identified Gonzalez as the Hispanic man pictured on the camera phone.
Gonzalez, has for the past seven months worked for Suburban Contract Cleaning, a subcontractor hired by Fusco to clean and maintain the station.
Gonzalez has been in Connecticut for seven years according to the state bail commissioner and was identified by Sprint/Nextel as the phone's subscriber, the affidavit said. Inside the phone, authorities found three video files each two hours long.
In each of the videos Gonzalez is clearly seen cutting up pieces of toilet paper and taping the paper around the lens of the camera phone. He is then seen sitting down on the toilet seat to check the view on the phone screen, the affidavit said.
In reviewing the video recordings, Connolly saw 16 women enter the stall, pull down their pants and sit on the toilet seat, the affidavit said.
It is not clear when the recordings were made.
MTA Police Sgt. John Rizzitelli said, "We knew almost immediately he was one of the station cleaners... He denied it."
Police on Wednesday also seized a home computer from Gonzalez' bedroom which is being analyzed for further images at the Connecticut State Police Crime Lab in Meriden.
The U.S. Immigration, Customs, & Enforcement Agency was notified about the case, due to Gonzalez' immigration status.
Gonzalez is no longer working at the train station, Jason Fascella, Fusco's property manager at the station said, referring further questions to Fusco's headquarters and the DOT.
DOT spokesman Judd Everhart praised the MTA Police for making the arrest.
"The MTA Police are to be commended for quick action on these allegations of outrageous criminal behavior," Everhart said. "Connecticut commuters expect and deserve safe, clean conditions at every location."
In both Stamford and Bridgeport, Fusco subcontracts for various services, including cleaning and parking tasks, DOT Spokesman Kevin Nursick said.
In 2007, Fusco received about $2.5 million to manage the Stamford station, including the cost of the subcontractors, Nursick said.
The DOT requires that all firms doing business with it follow state and federal employment and immigration laws, Nursick said.
Stamford is the busiest station on the Metro North New Haven Line after Grand Central, with an average of 4,300 getting off the train there each day - 2,500 coming from other points in Connecticut and 1,800 from New York - during the morning rush.
Source: Stamford Advocate
