Police are investigating another groping of a girl at a Halifax store

Police in Halifax County are looking for a suspect after another teen was groped at a store, saying they are concerned as HRM is increasingly reporting lewd acts targeting young girls.

Halifax Regional Police said they were called to Value Village on Chain Lake Drive in Bayers Lake Wednesday afternoon after a man groped the girl in the store before fleeing

The suspect is described as a white male in his early thirties with dark hair, a thin build, short facial hair and he wears black skinny jeans and a black and gray plaid long sleeve shirt. He was carrying a black duffel bag at the time.

While circumstances are similar to those of an incident last week at a Fall River Sobeys store, the man arrested in that case is still in custody. Cole William George Fidgen, 25, of no fixed address, has been charged with assault, sexual interference, two counts of criminal harassment, four counts of breach of contract and three counts of breach of an affidavit.

However, police are not ruling out a connection between Wednesday’s incident and another incident at Walmart in Bayers Lake on June 10, in which a man groped a girl he didn’t know and fled the scene.

HRP spokesman Const. Nicholas Gagnon said police are also checking for any connection to other incidents that have happened recently, including one in which RCMP was called by a woman who reported that her two teenage daughters were surreptitiously videotaped by a man using a mobile phone in the McDonalds in Lower Sackville. The suspect in that case appeared to be in his twenties or thirties with an unkempt beard and hair.

“It’s definitely something we’re looking at and we’re aware of the case file and the investigation,” Gagnon said.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Guillaume Tremblay said investigators are looking for links between the video case and other incidents, but the person involved in the Value Village incident may not be the same man in the McDonalds report.

However, there have been other video recording reports, including in HRM and New Minas, in which the suspicious description is similar to the person at McDonalds. Police are working to identify that person, Tremblay said.

He said anyone encountering cases like this should get a proper description and contact police about any new or past incidents.

“Anything suspicious, we ask people to call the police,” Tremblay said.

Also on Friday, HRP released information about incidents that occurred at Mic Mac Mall on June 25.

Police said in a press release that between 3:50 p.m. and 4:25 p.m., a man appeared to be following several groups of female youths around the mall, whom he did not recognize. In one incident, the man approached two female youths and made an inappropriate comment that appeared to be directed at the youths.

The suspect is described as a white male between 45 and 55 years old, clean shaven and heavily built. He wore a blue collared shirt, tan shorts, black strappy sandals, and a blue or black baseball cap with white text on the front.

The man left the mall in an older model vehicle that appeared to be 10 to 15 years old and may have been a Subaru Forester.