LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Lawrenceville police are searching for a man accused of groping a woman in a fitting room at Ty’s Drip Boutique.
The incident occurred when Tiras Anderson visited the boutique in Gwinnett County, where she alleges a male employee followed her into the fitting room and inappropriately touched her.
“I was just in shock because who expects that to happen? Just browsing a store,” Anderson told Channel 2 Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson.
Anderson recounted that she was leaving a braiding shop in May when 54-year-old Dwight Kirkham invited her into the boutique.
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“For him to be so comfortable in a public store, it was like, I don’t know what is going to happen next,” she said.
She says Kirkham insisted on helping her try on clothes, becoming more aggressive with each refusal.
“He was like, ‘Let me help you put them on,’ very, very persistent. I can’t get a word out,” Anderson explained.
“You can feel it in your body, just the anxiety,” she said. “You can feel it in your throat trying to hold back tears, and it was very, very, very traumatic.”
She said Kirkham inappropriately touched her, and she was left frozen with fear in the fitting room.
Anderson said she told him to stop, left the store, and called the police from a nearby shopping center.
“I need to press charges to prevent it from happening to someone else,” she stated.
Police have issued a warrant for Kirkham’s arrest on misdemeanor sexual battery charges.
Anderson warns that people sometimes use kindness to mask their true intentions, saying, “They usually use that tactic so when they’re doing something that is questionable, you kind of just write it off.”
Kirkham faces charges of misdemeanor sexual battery.
Johnson reached out to the owner of the business on Wednesday morning but has not heard back.
Police say they were arranging an interview with the suspect’s attorney before filing charges, but they say he stopped communicating with them.
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