Sex offender used iPhone to spy on girls in mall restrooms

A pervert spied on a young girl by placing his iPhone under a stall in a public women’s restroom.

Dorniel Nica, a registered sex offender, had filmed the teenager at Warrington’s Golden Square shopping center.

The 28-year-old appeared before the city’s district court in connection with the incident.

A teenage girl had been in a cubicle of the mall’s public toilets on October 2 this year after feeling ill, the court was told.

The girl, whose identity is protected, said she saw a hand holding a black iPhone emerging from under the partition with the neighboring cabin.

She believed the phone was recording and that a man was in the booth next to her.

The girl also thought she heard a man engaged in a sexual act.

She and a friend were then approached by two Cheshire police officers who went to the bathroom but were unable to locate the man.

They then combed the mall’s CCTV and saw that a man had entered the ladies’ room at 5:12 p.m. and exited at 5:55 p.m.

Officers were able to take an image of the man from the footage and submit it via Retrospective Facial Recognition (RFR) software.

The search found a match for Nica and he was traced to an address in Warrington.

After her arrest, Nica was later charged with voyeurism and attempting to observe a person in a private act.

Police Officer Wendy Whitehead, officer in the case, said: “Without the victim’s courage to approach the first police officer she saw, we might not have achieved the outcome that we did.”

“Thanks to the new technology at our disposal, we were able to quickly and effectively identify Nica, allowing us to investigate further and determine his whereabouts. This prompted us to seek justice for Nica’s victims and get a prolific offender behind bars and off the streets of Cheshire.

Nica, from Cherry Road, Chester, was sentenced to 36 weeks in prison.

He was also ordered to have two restraining orders against two girls and to pay court costs.

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