ORLANDO, Fla. – Detectives at colleges across the country are building their cases against a 24-year-old accused of recording women in bathrooms stalls at several different schools, thanks to the University of Central Florida Police Department.
Deontrae Mason was arrested in December at UCF. Since then, a UCF PD detective and crime analyst have alerted other schools to cases of voyeurism and victims they didn’t even know about.
[Become a News 6 Insider (it’s free!)]
UCF Police Department Detective Melissa Guadagnino and crime analyst Lindsay Svendsen said they first identified Mason by his shoes.
“We first got a call for service that there was a male taking pictures of females,” Guadagnino said. “The victim described him as having very defined shoes. They were Champion slippers, like house slippers. So that helped us out a lot. She was kind of shaken up because she didn’t expect it. She said she was using the restroom and didn’t see anyone in there. She sat down and felt there was a presence above her and she looked up and saw a camera. And the first thing she noticed about this person was their shoes.”
Guadagnino said the victim confronted the man with the camera long enough to get a good look at his face before he ran off.
“So we took the time frame that the victim told us, in the building she was in, (with) the description she gave us,” Guadagnino said.
They scoured surveillance video and found a match.
“And then I started zooming in to see if I could see his shoes,” Guadagnino said.
Guadagnino confirmed the surveillance footage showed the distinctive black slides described by the victim.
The police used the cameras to follow the man to his car and tapped into the campuswide license plate readers.
“And then once we got the tag, I said Lindsay do your work,” Guadagnino said.
Svendsen scanned social media and found several accounts based on the name to which the car was registered.
“When I saw his pictures on Facebook I noticed the necklace and white hoodie as well as the glasses that matched the description,” Svendsen said.
And the shoes.
Svendsen said all of that was enough to name the suspect, Deontrae Mason. The 24-year-old was not a student or even a former student.
“So he was here two or three times prior to that as well,” Guadagnino said. “So, we’re like, he’s probably going to come back because he hasn’t gotten caught yet.”
They were right. Guadagnino said emergency dispatchers got an alert when the plate readers caught the same car coming back onto campus. Police arrested Mason on the spot.
“He’s basically said that he’s been doing this for a while and he has a big problem,” Guadagnino said.
Guadagnino said she soon learned how big of a problem when she downloaded the data from Mason’s cell phone.
“When I was searching, I found hundreds of videos of females using the restroom,” Guadagnino said. “Well, at that point, I’m like well, they’re not all the same photos so I looked at the longitude and latitude and was able to pinpoint five or six colleges throughout the country that he was visiting.”
Svendsen notified all of the colleges in Florida and said two of them had similar incidents of bathroom voyeurism.
The other ones across the country didn’t even know the voyeurism had happened there.
“Some of them were surprised and didn’t believe it and said, ‘Not on our campus and can you send me the videos so I can make sure that it matches?’” Guadagnino said.
Guadagnino and Svendsen credited the victim for trusting them to get results.
“The fact that she actually came forward and saw something and said something to us, that give us a big result. We were able to help out and do our job,” Guadagnino said. “Oh yeah, he has a big problem so I think he’d still be doing it.”