A man followed a 67-year-old woman into her Little Canada apartment, refused to leave and fondled her, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.
Ramsey County sheriff’s deputies were called at 2 p.m. Monday to the 100 block of East Little Canada Road on a report of a disturbance. A woman reported that a man, later identified as 29-year-old Nicholas Andrew Smith, had walked into her apartment behind her, the complaint said.
She told him several times he needed to leave, but he would not and “insisted on using the bathroom and then wanted a glass of water,” the complaint said. The woman tried to call 911, though Smith took the phone from her.
The woman also reported that Smith, of St. Paul, was playing with her dog and she believed he hurt the dog’s leg.
When the woman tried to leave, Smith “fondled her breast and hugged her in a bear hug and would not let her leave the apartment,” the complaint continued. “She was eventually able to get away from him and get out of her apartment. When he followed her out into the hallway, she doubled back and got into her apartment and successfully locked the door.”
Deputies found Smith in the hallway outside an apartment. Two witnesses said he had been wandering around the hallways and deputies learned he has a cousin who lives in another apartment in the complex.
After his arrest, Smith “stated that he had been drinking the evening before and he claimed a lack of memory,” the complaint said. He said he saw an older woman who’d complained something was wrong with her dog, but “denied having any kind of confrontation with her and he denied being in her apartment or touching her.”
The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged Smith with first-degree burglary.