Suspect sketch released in Fayetteville sex assault

Early Monday, a woman on Bear Creek Circle was attacked after a man knocked on her door and pulled her outside when she answered, police said.

The incident followed one in which a man tried to grab a 16-year-old girl from another Bear Creek Circle home. The girl was in the kitchen at about 2 a.m. when she heard someone jiggling the handle to the front door and then tapping on a back window, her stepmother said Tuesday.

"That's when she went to the back door, and she opened it maybe 3 or 4 inches, and the guy tried to grab her arm, tried to pull her out the door," said the stepmother, who didn't want to be identified. "We woke up to her screaming."

The girl wasn't hurt, and her screams scared off the man, who jumped a fence and ran off. Police arrived a few minutes later.

"As soon as we walked out, we heard the screams like four or five houses down, and he unfortunately got another girl," the teen's stepmother said.

Investigators believe the same man tried to get into a woman's house on nearby Winnabow Drive on June 5, said Dan Grubb, spokesman for the Fayetteville Police Department.

Last Friday, police went door to door in the neighborhood to urge residents to remain vigilant.

"This person is brazen enough to go out there and not only repeat the crime but to escalate it a little bit with the sexual assault," Grubb said.

Investigators don't believe the man is linked to a series of burglaries and rapes in Fayetteville and Hope Mills between last June and January, Grubb said.  Still, the sketch of the Bear Creek Circle suspect and the suspected serial rapist both depict a man with a tight-fitting black cap.

"All of us are scared now. We don't ever feel safe in our own homes, even with the door locked," the teen's stepmother said.