A Brighton man who local police describe as “very familiar” to them has been charged for being an alleged “peeping Tom” in what police say are his normal neighborhood haunts, leaving at least one woman hiding on her floor to avoid his gaze.
Boston Police say they arrested Francis Gomez, 36, in Brighton Wednesday night for two incidents of “peeping in windows” at residences on Donnybrook Road and Beechcroft Street, both in Brighton.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment at municipal court in Brighton Thursday and is being held in lieu of posting $5,000 bail. The judge ordered that if Gomez were to post bail, he must stay away from the target areas
A woman living on Donnybrook Road called police last Thursday to report that several nights before, on March 17, she saw a man “walking back and forth, outside her residence, staring at her window” for a period of time around 2:30 a.m.
His behavior, she told a detective, scared her so much that she “immediately got onto the floor because she was terrified of being seen by this suspect” when he made his way up to her porch, according to the police report.
The woman and her housemate told police that the man, who they said was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood wrapped tightly around his head, walked up to the porch and they could hear “the outside doorknob jiggling,” police said.
Police canvassed the area and came up with a video recorded from a Blink security camera installed on a nearby home. They showed a still of a man roughly matching the alleged victim’s description to her and she agreed that was the man she had seen.
Police say the still was of a man they knew to be Gomez, who they wrote in their report has “exhibited this type of behavior in the past on numerous occasions” and has a history of breaking and entering, or attempting to do so.
Another similar alleged incident occurred the same night, this time on Beechcroft, where a woman reported a man walking around her house with a flashlight and looking into her windows.
She told police he started with her downstairs kitchen window before making his way around to her bedroom window, after which she called police. When police arrived, they found no suspect “but did find a plastic chair in the driveway directly in front of the victim’s window” which the victim said did not belong to her.
Police were also able to recover video from the Beechcroft Street neighborhood.
In June of 2022, Gomez was arrested and charged with breaking and entering in the nighttime and possession of burglarious instruments related to an incident on Gardena Street in Brighton, according to the incident’s police report.
In that event, the caller said she walked out of her bedroom toward the bathroom of her home a little after 5 a.m. and was surprised to find a man, who the police say is Gomez, running away through her kitchen.
“I try to do peepee over in the corner and the lady she see me and I go, man,” Gomez allegedly told officers after the woman identified him.
Police say they found plyers and a screwdriver in his pants pocket at his arrest.
