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SALT LAKE CITY — A man released from jail earlier this year after serving nearly a year for inappropriately touching random women on the University of Utah campus has been arrested for allegedly doing the same thing to teenage girls riding TRAX, police say.
Jared David Grimes, 27, who is believed to be homeless, was arrested Thursday for investigation of forcible sexual abuse and drug possession.
On Thursday, a 15-year-old girl reported to police that Grimes sat next to her on a TRAX train in South Salt Lake.
The male "began to ask the girl for her cellphone number and took the victim's cellphone placing his number into her phone. The female victim said that the male then asked if she wanted to get a hotel room at which time she said no and told the male she was only 15 years old," a Salt Lake County Jail report states.
Grimes then kissed the girl and inappropriately touched her, according to the report.
When the girl got off the train, her friends waiting for her noticed something was wrong and notified UTA police. Officers obtained a photo of Grimes through a surveillance camera and "discovered that the male was the same suspect from a similar incident reported early in the day on the FrontRunner train in Salt Lake City during which the same male approached juvenile females and asked them for their phone numbers and made them uncomfortable," the report states.
Police were able to locate Grimes and after interviewing him, arrested him.
"There have been two previously reported incidents involving Mr. Grimes approaching young juvenile females on the transit system and asking them for their phone numbers and making it uncomfortable enough that they reported the encounters to the police," investigators noted.
In 2017, Grimes was convicted of an amended charge of attempted forcible sexual abuse, a third-degree felony. On Aug. 31, 2016, Grimes approached three women on the U. campus asking for their phone numbers. He then licked the necks of the women and in at least one case, inappropriately touched a woman with his hands, a police report states.
After his arrest, Grimes was found to be incompetent to stand trial and he was sent to the Utah State Hospital, according to court records. In February, it was determined that his competency had been restored. He immediately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served for the nearly one year he had been in custody.
Grimes was also placed on 60 months of probation and ordered to undergo substance abuse, mental health and psychosexual evaluations and take psychotropic medication, court records indicate.
