STATE COLLEGE — A Spring Mills man has been arrested after police say he’s made a habit of prowling around a State College apartment complex at night, and admitted to peeping into windows six times since the beginning of the year.
State College police say 58- year-old Benjamin C. Auman was caught after a woman complained to police that she saw a slightly heavy person with a round face looking in the window of her University Terrace apartment in February.
“We’ve taken prowlers very seriously,” said State College police Capt. Dana Leonard. “Quite often someone who prowls and peeps will engage in other criminal behavior.”
State College police Detective Michael T. McDannel took the opportunity to install a video surveillance system later in the month covering the “catwalk” area outside the woman’s bedroom, and in April, Auman, who lives at 507 Orndorf Road, was again seen looking into the woman’s apartment, police said.
Police were able to identify Auman as the man who was also arrested twice in 2005 for loitering and prowling at night on the same street and looking into windows in the same complex, court documents say.
In those cases, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
In 2000, he was also given a probation sentence for a single loitering and prowling charge.
Auman later admitted that he was seen on the surveillance tape, but “claimed he did not recall where this took place even after being told where it was located,” police wrote in charging papers.
“Auman indicated he has been arrested for prowling in the past and he has been looking in windows approximately six times in 2009,” police wrote, but then said he “did not recall the incident in February 2009 at this same window.”
He now faces two counts of loitering and prowling at night — one count related to the peeping in February, and the second in connection with the April incident where he was caught on tape — and waived his preliminary hearing on the charges Wednesday.
Sara Ganim can be reached at 231-4616.
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