A Brownsville man is in police custody following his arrest on an invasive visual recording charge.
Brownsville police report Michael Ray Sykes, 32, was going to local shopping stores where he would take pictures of women without their consent.
“He was going around the shopping stores like Walmart and Target, all those different locations. He would notice a female with a dress on or a skirt and he would get next to them,” said Investigator Martin Sandoval spokesman for the Brownsville Police Department, on Thursday. “He would get right next them and kind of pretend he was looking for stuff. He would go down like he was looking for something else and then he would slip his phone underneath the dress and take a picture.”
Sandoval said through a Crime Stoppers tip, police were able to identify Sykes and he was arrested on Thursday.
“Somebody gave us a full name of the individual, where he was located and everything,” Sandoval said, adding that Sykes’ employer is the one that turned him over to authorities.
He is expected to be arraigned on Friday.
Sandoval said the first the first incident happened sometime in December at a Walmart store.
A post seeking Sykes identification was posted on the Brownsville PD’s Facebook page this week and another woman contacted police stating she believed he had did the same thing to her while she was shopping at Target, the investigator said.
Authorities believe a third woman might also come forward and suspect there could be more victims.
“We have no numbers right now,” of how many victims there are, “but we think there will be quite a few,” Sandoval said.
Sandoval said the department’s Criminal Investigation Unit is still searching for other victims and if anyone believes that they were a victim of Skyes to file a report online at brownsvillepd.com.
