A New Jersey man has been arrested in Pennsylvania after allegedly groping a mall Easter Bunny, Us Weekly confirmed.
Bera Shivakrishna was busted inside the South Hills Village Mall on Monday, March 23.
Shivakrishna, 36, was visiting the mall in Pittsburgh when he approached a woman who was working as the Easter Bunny and taking photos with children and their families. He started asking the woman inappropriate and sexually charged questions, and she told him to speak with her assistant, who was nearby.
Shivakrishna refused and instead started touching the arm and chest of the woman in the Easter Bunny suit. She told police he then grabbed her breasts with both hands.
According to the assistant, Shivakrishna had asked whether the person in the suit was “a boy or a girl.” Shivakrishna also allegedly put his fingers in the nose and mouth of the bunny costume. (It was unclear if he was with any children when he decided to approach the woman in the suit.)
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After interviewing the victim and witnesses and reviewing mall security video, Shivakrishna was tracked down and detained. He was found in the AMC Theatre next to the mall, sleeping in the top row in one of the auditoriums.
After he was read his rights, Shivakrishna allegedly told police he thought the walking, talking Easter Bunny was actually a doll. However, he was informed it was, indeed, a person — and not a doll to be groped.
“By mistake, my hand touched her, if it’s a lady,” he allegedly admitted to police officers who arrested him.
Shivakrishna was charged with indecent assault.
It was unclear whether he had a lawyer on Friday, March 27. Also unknown was whether he had entered a plea on Wednesday, March 25, during his initial court appearance.
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Police did not disclose what town in New Jersey the suspect is from.
South Hills Village Mall was Pittsburgh’s first indoor mall and first opened its doors on July 28, 1965. Originally developed by the Oxford Development Company, it was the largest shopping mall in the Greater Pittsburgh area until the Monroeville Mall, also built by the Oxford Development Company, opened in 1969.
During the summer of 2018, four years after the mall underwent a major design overhaul, a major fire sprinkler system pipe burst, causing a portion of the mall’s ceiling to collapse. No one was injured and the mall remained open, though 10 stores had to be closed temporarily. All but one reopened once the repair work was completed.
