A convicted sex offender has been arrested for allegedly trying to videotape women in the restroom at a Maryland restaurant.
Anne Arundel County police said investigators began looking into the peeping tom case after a 19-year-old woman reported that a man tried to use his cell phone to videotape her while she was in a restroom stall at a Glen Burnie Panera Bread on March 5.
On March 27, another woman reported that she saw a man leaving the women’s restroom at the same Panera Bread, located on the 6600 block of Ritchie Highway. Surveillance video showed it was the same man from the earlier incident, police said.
Authorities said 50-year-old Michael Villa was arrested on Tuesday after a restaurant employee saw him trying to enter the women’s restroom and recognized him. Villa fled from the Panera Bread, but workers followed him to his vehicle and obtained his license plate number. He was apprehended at a Brooklyn Park shopping center, police said.
Villa was convicted in 2001 of a third-degree sex offense in Anne Arundel, according to the Maryland Sex Offender Registry and court records.
