Man arrested after video shows attack on real estate agent at open house

Police have arrested a suspect after video showed a man shoving a real estate agent to the ground and groping her at an open house in Los Angeles.

The suspect was taken into custody Tuesday night, a Los Angeles police spokeswoman told NBC News. His identity and potential charges against him are being withheld until he is booked later Wednesday, the spokeswoman said.

The attack happened at about 3 p.m. Sunday after a Keller-Williams Realty agent showed at an real estate open house in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of Encino. Surveillance video shows the agent and the man walking outside and the woman telling the man to leave.

“You saw the house. You’re done. That’s it,” she says in the video obtained by NBC Los Angeles.

The man briefly takes his baseball cap off his head, looks up at the camera and smiles. He then shakes the agent’s hand and violently shoves her, causing the woman to fall backward into a bush. As the woman screams for help, the man puts his hands on her chest and then runs off.

The agent, who has not been identified, told NBC Los Angeles that she was left shaken by the encounter. “I couldn’t sleep. I keep watching the video and crying,” she said.

Since the video was released, two other real estate agents have come forward and said that they believe the same man had groped them at other open house events.

One agent, who asked to remain anonymous, told NBC Los Angeles that she recognized the man after watching the video and seeing him take his hat off. She said that during an open house last June, he said he was a cabinet maker but started to ask the agent personal questions.

The woman said she became concerned and when she asked him to leave he tried to hug her. The agent said she pushed the man away and he grabbed her chest before fleeing. The woman said a week after the incident, she saw the man riding a bicycle repeatedly past a house she was showing.

The woman said she recorded a video of him riding past the house, but did not think it was clear enough for investigators to identify him and she did not file a police report.