By KATHRYN WEXLER
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 17, 1999
TAMPA -- Police say a cross-dressing man in a red pickup truck who asked a mother and her 6-year-old daughter if they wanted a ride Friday, may not be the same cross-dressing man who has approached or attacked a dozen women in recent months.
Nancy Ocasio said she was walking with her daughter to the girl's school, Cleveland Elementary, and didn't accept the man's offer for a ride. Once inside the school, she saw a notice warning parents about a man in women's clothing who had approached women and school girls at bus stops. She called police.
Investigators began getting reports in October that a man wearing women's clothes was approaching and grabbing his victims. Two victims reported being sexually assaulted by the man.
But Tampa police on Friday pointed to several differences between previous reports and the one Friday about 8:30 a.m. on the 700 block of Hamilton Avenue.
The man who approached Ocasio was wearing a curly red wig, fake eyelashes, red lipstick and a blue print dress. The man described in previous reports wore some type of women's clothing, such as a bra over a dress or a slip over pants, but never a wig or makeup, police said.
Ocasio said the man drove a red Ford Ranger pickup with dark-tinted windows, but other victims have said the attacker drove a red or burgundy Chevrolet S-10.
Also, police said, the man involved in the previous cases has been physically aggressive. Friday, he merely offered a ride.
"That does not match his M.O.," police spokesman Steve Cole said.
Ocasio said that when she left her house on Crenshaw Street with her daughter, the man in the truck slowed and stared at them.
When Ocasio arrived at the school a few minutes later, the man was waiting next to the school, she said. He rolled down his passenger window and spoke to her in a falsetto, asking her again if she wanted a ride.
"I smiled," Ocasio said. "I said I was already at my destination."
He watched as she went inside. As she signed in her daughter for being late, she saw the notice and told school officials.
"I didn't feel threatened at all until I found out it was a serial thing," she said.
The man was still at the corner when she came out with an administrator 15 minutes later. He drove off when he saw them, Ocasio said.
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