A Kailua-Kona fitness instructor chased down a man who allegedly peeped on her in the restroom at Target on Wednesday evening.
Katie Moore was on her way to teach a Zumba class around 5 p.m. when she stopped at the Kailua-Kona store to use the restroom. In the stall, she became aware of something over her head and was filled with a terrible feeling.
“I looked up and he had both hands on the partition and was lifting himself to come over,” Moore said. “I hit him twice. It was kind of a swat to get him away. I pulled up my shorts and ran out of the stall. He was running out of the other stall.”
Moore and another man chased the peeper through the store, then down the street toward the BMW of Hawaii dealership on Loloku Street. Then the man stopped, with Moore yelling at him to sit down.
“I told him, ‘sit down, you’re not going anywhere. The cops are coming,’” Moore said. “That’s when he pulled a knife out to make me stop chasing him.”
The man then fled into the parking lot of the BMW dealership, where the man who was helping Moore in the pursuit tackled the suspect to the ground. The man dropped the knife as the two scuffled, Moore said.
“The guy kept trying to hit him and Chris was trying to hold him there,” Moore said.
The man then escaped and headed through a field toward Kekuaokalani Gymnasium. Moore and a half-dozen bystanders cornered the man in a fenced area near the gym and waited for police, who located and arrested Dancy Lakjohn, 18, of Kailua-Kona.
Lakjohn was charged with felony terroristic threatening, fourth-degree sexual assault, third-degree assault and second-degree criminal trespassing. He appeared in court on Thursday and was placed on supervised release pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for early December.
“I wasn’t going to let him get away,” Moore said. “What if that had been a child or another woman? Totally unacceptable behavior. He could have peeped at 10 or 20 other women. It makes me so angry.”
Calls to Target were directed to the corporation’s media representative, who had not responded to phone calls and emails at deadline.
It is the second recent report of a “Peeping Tom” incident. Police late last month arrested a 15-year-old boy accused of repeatedly peering into windows in the Waikoloa Village area following a four-month investigation.
“I’m glad it was me because I was able to keep up,” Moore concluded. “He peeped at the wrong girl.”