WASHINGTON – The man who police say jumped a fence securing the White House grounds to escape after a Tuesday afternoon crime spree had minutes earlier groped a female college student and then robbed other women of a cellphone and purse, according to an arrest affidavit filed in court.
Police said the 30-year-old man injured his hand while crawling along the fence line and was arrested and taken to George Washington University Hospital. There, the affidavit says, he sexually assaulted a nurse while handcuffed to a gurney and shackled in leg restraints.
The U.S. attorney’s office on Wednesday charged Steven S. Cox, of no known address, with several counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse and robbery. A D.C. Superior Court judge ordered him detained pending a hearing on Friday. Court documents say he is also known as Patrick Steven Cox.
His attorney, with the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, did not respond to calls seeking comment.
The case offers a new twist on instances of those who attempt or succeed in getting onto the grounds of the executive mansion. Many do it as stunts or to make a political statement or are emotionally disturbed. Few, if any, have jumped the fence of the one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the world to escape another crime.
In an unrelated incident Wednesday, the U.S. Secret Service arrested a man who they said threw personal belongings over the White House fence. Authorities put the first family’s home on lockdown in both cases this week and briefly kept tourists away from the pedestrian plaza at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. That person has not been identified.
Cox was convicted in 2015 of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl by grabbing her breasts on a Glenmont-bound Metro train while it was at Union Station. He served 45 days in jail and was put on three years’ probation. In October 2014, Cox grabbed a woman’s buttocks while she was on the escalator at the Eastern Market Metro station. He was convicted and again sentenced to 45 days in jail.
D.C. police said the suspect’s alleged crime spree Tuesday apparently began about 3:30 p.m. on the campus of George Washington University, when he allegedly tried to “hit on” a student waiting for a bus in the 2100 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The woman told a GWU police officer that she told the man – dressed in a black sweatshirt and black pants – to leave her alone, and he then grabbed her in an inappropriate place.
The police affidavit said the woman ran to her dorm and called police.
A few minutes later, police said, a woman reported that a man approached her as she ate lunch at an outdoor table at Cities Restaurant and Lounge, in the 1900 block of K Street NW, and asked for money. After she refused, she told police, he grabbed her white cellphone from the table and ran toward the White House.
The victim in that case followed the man, according to the affidavit, and watched as, police said, he pushed a woman to the ground and took her purse and phone outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at 17th and G streets NW.
Police said the man then jumped the fence and was arrested by uniformed officers of the U.S. Secret Service. The arrest affidavit says the two women who were robbed were at the scene and identified him. The report says the officer at GWU heard a be-on-the-lookout broadcast for the man and identified him as a suspect in the sexual assault.
The arrest affidavit says that Cox told arresting officers, “I’m going to take your guns and shoot you.” He then told the officers, “Shoot me in the head,” according to the affidavit.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Peter Hermann
