VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – A 55-year-old Deltona man was arrested and faces a charge of aggravated stalking of a 6-year-old girl, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
Deputies said Mark Greenburg was taken into custody on Saturday after detectives obtained an arrest warrant when the girl’s father and neighbor reported a “long pattern of his harassing behavior toward her and others.”
[TRENDING: NASA delays Artemis launch; new date to be decided | Man faces criminal charges after threatening to crash plane in Mississippi, officials say | Become a News 6 Insider (it’s free!)]
Over the last eight months, the sheriff’s office said it followed a series of complaints from about a dozen witnesses, which include at least 11 incidents. According to an incident report, the sheriff’s office said Greenburg harassed neighbors, yelled at them and their children with a megaphone and drove past their house while recording children on his phone.
Deputies responded to Greenburg’s neighborhood Friday evening after a father reported that Greenburg walked to the end of his driveway and made several inappropriate comments to his 6-year-old daughter.
Witnesses were able to give similar accounts of Greenburg’s inappropriate comments to the child, according to deputies, including that he was going to pick her up and take her to Disney World.
Austin Franco was relieved after finding out Greenburg was taken into custody over the weekend.
“We just had to come together and get it all taken care of as a neighborhood,” Franco said. “He got tired of us not doing anything to him or responding to him and he started to bring in the kids into it and that’s when a month, two months, calling the kids’ names, researching the kids’ names, finding out where they lived.”
The sheriff’s office said the child’s father told deputies that Greenburg’s comments have been getting worse and more frequent and that the comments have made his daughter afraid to go outside.
It was also reported that Greenburg parked outside of the 6-year-old girl’s grandmother’s house and took photos, which is in another neighborhood, according to the report. Since Greenburg was never invited to the home and had no reason to know where the grandmother lived, the family believed Greenburg followed someone there, according to the sheriff’s office.
Another resident, Shawn, said he’s made complaints to the sheriff’s office about Greenburg, too.
“He actually used the N word toward... myself and another neighbor and he also made threats that day and in the past about what he wants to do us,” Shawn said.
When deputies tried to speak to Greenburg on Friday evening, he refused to answer, telling them he would speak another day.
Deputies returned with a warrant on Saturday and arrested Greenburg without incident.
Greenburg was taken to the Volusia County Branch Jail, where he remains in custody on $5,000 bond.
Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily: