Woman says ‘Peeping Tom’ recorded her while she was inside mall dressing room

An El Paso woman says she is in shock after she allegedly caught a man secretly recording her with his phone while she was inside a dressing room.

Erica Gonzalez tells ABC-7 she was shopping at a store inside of Cielo Vista Mall Tuesday morning when she walked inside the dressing room to try on a few items. After a couple of moments, she noticed something odd.

“I saw his left foot stuck into the dressing room underneath the door and as I looked down, I saw he had an IPhone flipped upside down recording me,” Erica Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez said the man strapped the iPhone to his ankle and then stood right next to the dressing room door. The man allegedly positioned his foot slightly inside the dressing room through the bottom opening in the door. This allegedly allowed him to record Gonzalez with the iPhone strapped to his ankle.

Gonzalez says, at that moment, she threw some clothes on and confronted the man.

“Of course he’s denying it, he’s apologizing to me and I ran out of the dressing room with him dragging him and telling people to help me, yelling for help.”

Gonzalez says other shoppers alerted store associates who then alerted mall security. As store associates were with the man outside the store, Gonzalez says she ran back in to grab her belongings. When she got back, the man was gone.

“That’s when I started yelling at the associates, why did you let him go?”

She says mall security searched for the man and located him ten minutes later. “That gave him enough time to remove whatever it is he had on his ankle, delete, so he knew what he was doing,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez took to Facebook to share her concerns and while she received support, there was a lot of backlash. Many commenting and body shaming and blaming her for what happened.

Gonzalez identified the store and the the alleged peeping Tom in her Facebook post. Gonzalez told ABC-7 Facebook twice removed the post. ABC-7 is not identifying the suspect because he has not been charged with a crime – yet.

“Had it been your sister, had it been your mother, your daughter, I’m sure you would’ve never said that about them. It could happen to anyone, it has happened to women who are fully clothed, little girls,” Gonzalez said.

She tells ABC-7 there were so many thoughts that ran through her head, but she’s glad she’s safe because she’s worried it could’ve been a lot worse.

“I felt like he had violated my privacy, I felt like it’s a place where we should be safe, everyone not just women, men too should be safe,” Gonzalez said.

Police say they responded to the situation but tell ABC-7 no arrests have been made and the case is still under investigation. Officials with Cielo Vista Mall have not yet responded to repeated requests for comment.