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Suspected mall slasher arrested in Peru

By Caitlin Gibson,January 14, 2012

Johnny D. Guillen Pimentel, 40, a suspect in the retail store assaults that… (Courtesy of Fairfax County…)

The man suspected of slashing young women’s buttocks as they shopped at Fairfax County shopping malls last year has been arrested in Peru, police said Saturday.

Authorities said they did not have any details of the arrest but confirmed that Johnny D. Guillen Pimentel, 40, was in custody in Peru and that police were “just starting the process of working with federal and international authorities to return him back to Fairfax County,” said Officer Shelley Broderick, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman, in a statement.

Fairfax police issued a warrant in September charging Guillen Pimentel with malicious wounding in one of nine attacks on women in their teens and early 20s. The slashings took place between February and July last year at Fair Oaks Mall, Tysons Corner Center and other nearby shopping centers, police said.

In mid-December, authorities learned that Guillen Pimentel had fled to his native Peru, where his arrival sparked a flurry of local media coverage dubbing him a “corta nalgas,” or “buttock slasher.”

Guillen Pimentel allegedly used a razor blade or box cutter to slice the behinds of women who were distracted as they shopped, authorities said. None of the women were seriously injured, but the repeated incidents led Fairfax police to form a task force to find the attacker.

The series of slashings, all of which occurred during the afternoon and evening hours when the malls were crowded, received widespread media coverage. Police stationed officers at shopping centers across Fairfax to calm unsettled shoppers and help deter further attacks. Authorities have not identified a motive for the bizarre attacks.

Guillen Pimentel’s older brother, Edgar Rolando Guillen Pimentel, told The Washington Post in September that he did not know his brother to be violent or aggressive. Johnny Guillen Pimentel, a former Fairfax resident, came to the United States from Peru almost a decade ago and has a young son, his brother said.

“I’d like to know if there is something going on in his mind,” Edgar Guillen Pimentel said in Spanish at the time. “It pains me that someone in my family is accused of doing this.”