16-Year-Old Boardwalk Employee Accused of Inappropriately Touching 13-Year-Old Girl

WILDWOOD – A juvenile store employee working at a Wildwood Boardwalk business has been charged after allegedly having inappropriate contact with a 13-year-old girl on the store premises.
Wildwood Police Department (WPD) released information, saying two uniformed patrol officers of the WPD were approached, June 25, at approximately 7:45 p.m., by a concerned citizen who reported a suspicious interaction between a male subject and a female customer inside a store in the 3000 block of the Boardwalk.
Afterward, both uniformed patrol officers responded to the store in an attempt to locate the girl but could not find her.
During the continuing investigation conducted by the WPD Detective Division, additional information revealed that the girl was allegedly inappropriately touched by a 16-year-old male inside the store’s storage room.
As a result of the investigation, the 16-year-old suspect was located and taken into custody without further incident. The suspect has been charged with third-degree endangering the welfare of a child and fourth-degree criminal sexual contact and released on a juvenile summons complaint.
A Facebook post after the incident said that the writer witnessed a store clerk take an underage girl into the back room. Thinking it suspicious, the writer decided to wait to see if maybe something was wrong.
Seeing the girl come out of the back of the store, red in the face, walking fast with her head down and in tears, the writer followed the girl and eventually caught up with her. The writer said the girl told her the employee took her into a back room to ring up her purchase, but instead, he forcibly kissed and groped her.
The writer contacted police officers on the Boardwalk, but believed they were not going to investigate. The WPD posted on its Facebook page, June 27, that it was requesting the public’s assistance in determining what happened June 25. That WPD post has since been removed.