A 49-year-old man was arrested and charged with one count of battery on Thanksgiving after allegedly following and grabbing a female student’s buttocks in a University of Miami parking lot, according to the Coral Gables Police Department. The incident occurred in the parking lot of the BankUnited Center on Nov. 15, at approximately 8:27 p.m., according to police.
Richard Salvatore Sciandria was arrested on Nov. 26, following a tip from a Miami Beach resident who had seen a picture of the defendant included in a crime alert issued to the community the day after the incident. The resident called the University of Miami Police Department upon seeing the crime alert, “…advising that the subject of the crime alert strongly resembled the subject that attacked her and her daughter on 2012,” according to the arrest affidavit.
The affidavit states that officers met the defendant’s father on Nov. 18 and he identified his son as the person shown in the crime alert picture, but “advised his son had left the residence and was not returning his calls.” Cutler Bay Police then identified Sciandria on Nov. 26 and UMPD detectives arrested him, according to CGPD.
Sciandria, a resident of Cutler Bay, previously pleaded no contest to one count of lewd and lascivious behavior and one count of resisting an officer without violence, according to Miami-Dade County court records filed on Jan. 2, 2012. County Court Judge Maria D. Ortiz ordered Sciandria to six months of probation at the time, according to court records filed on Jan. 3, 2012.