Police looking for SEPTA trolley station rapist

Authorities said late Monday afternoon that they have identified a man who allegedly sexually assaulted two people, including a teenage girl, at SEPTA trolley stops in Center City.

Earlier in the day, investigators publicized surveillance images of the suspect. Police have not released his name, and he has not yet been arrested, a PPD spokesperson said.

Officers were called to 19th and Market streets at around noon Sunday, where they met a 20-year-old woman who said she had been attacked while walking up a set of stairs from an underground station in the area, according to police.

A similar assault occurred last Wednesday, Aug. 3, when a 17-year-old girl was attacked after being followed to a trolley stop near Love Park, authorities said.

In both cases, the suspect was wearing a tan NASA hooded sweatshirt, according to investigators.

On July 18, a man in a gray NASA hoodie with a different design allegedly raped a woman at gunpoint in front of her boyfriend inside South Philadelphia’s Snyder Station on SEPTA’s Broad Street Line.

Nasir Thomas, 20, of Wilmington, Delaware, was arrested two days after the incident, and he has since been charged with rape, two counts of robbery and gun offenses. Court records indicate he remains behind bars at the city’s Northeast Philadelphia jail complex.

Anyone with information about the suspect in the Center City assaults is asked to contact the PPD’s Special Victims Unit at 215-685-3251/3252; call or text 215-686-8477; or submit an anonymous tip at www.phillypolice.com/forms/submit-a-tip.