Incident at site of previous serious assaults

GARDAÍ do not believe a man arrested for an unwanted approach to three young women in Athlone is linked to four previous assaults on women at the same location.

The man stopped his car at Bonavalley Bridge just after midnight yesterday and ran towards the women. There was a confrontation, before he fled in his car.

The bridge is the location of four serious assaults on women over the past two years, sparking an alarm it could be the same man.

But Garda sources said they did not suspect the man was involved in those cases.

“There are very significant differences in the modus operandi,” said one Garda source. “While the location is the same, the circumstances are very different.”

He said in yesterday’s case, which happened at 12.30am, the man used his own car, which in itself is unusual.

He said in the previous cases the attacker hid in the undergrowth, and dragged a lone female in. In yesterday’s case the man was in the open and approached three women.

Gardaí will nevertheless exhaust the possibility the man is linked. They may put this man’s photo into an album and show it to the four victims on the off-chance he is familiar to them.

Gardaí said that as it stands the man is being questioned about the most recent incident.

The three young women, two teenagers and one in her early 20s, had left their house in Willow Park, a student area, and were walking towards town.

A car pulled up in front of them at the bridge and the man ran back to them and made, what gardaí describe as, an “abnormal approach”.

A confrontation developed with one of the teenage girls, who was assisted by her friends. The man ran back to his car and drove off.

The quick-thinking women raised the alarm with the help of a passing taxi driver.

Gardaí immediately set up checkpoints in the area and stopped a car on the Ballinasloe Road and a male driver, aged 24, was arrested.

Detectives investigated if the man was known to the women, but believe he is a stranger to them.