OVIEDO, Fla. – A man accused of recording girls in the fitting room of a Plato’s Closet in Oviedo made his first appearance before a judge Wednesday, a day after he was arrested.
Brian Bishop, 39, was arrested Tuesday and charged with video voyeurism.A judge set his bond at $5,000 and as of 5 p.m. Wednesday, his bond had yet to be paid.
According to the Oviedo Police Department, the underage girls were trying on clothes in a fitting room on July 2 when they saw a man put his phone under the door to record them. The victims yelled and the man ran away, police said.
Police reviewed surveillance video at the store, which showed a man dropping a pair of pants by the fitting room door and recording the girls while he picked up the pants, an arrest affidavit said.
“They came up to me saying somebody took a video of them getting undressed,” Sophia Puentes, the assistant manager at the store, told News 6 on Wednesday. “They didn’t know what he looked like, only that he had black shoes on.”
The man, identified as Bishop, did this twice before walking around the store and coming back to the fitting room to record the girls again, the affidavit stated.
Puentes recounted Bishop exhibiting suspicious behavior shortly after walking into the store.
“I noticed he kept on looking at me,” she said. “I was getting a little bit weirded out.”
Puentes said she remembered thinking that it seemed like Bishop was pretending to go through the clothes in the store.
“He kept on staring at me,” Puentes said. “And he was ignoring my other co-worker, just staring at me. I felt uncomfortable, so I went into the bathroom to just kind of wait until he walked off.”
Oviedo police said after it posted the man’s photo on its Facebook page on Tuesday, the man’s roommate identified him as Bishop. Officers later arrested Bishop at his home.
When questioned about the incident, Bishop told investigators he used his phone to take several videos of the girls, the affidavit reads. He then told police he “immediately deleted” the videos while leaving the store.
If freed on bond, Bishop is ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor. He is also prohibited from having contact with the alleged victims and is not allowed to return to the Plato’s Closet store.