APD searches for man who exposed himself to female customer at truck stop
ATLANTA - Atlanta police are searching for a man they say performed a sex act on himself in front of a woman at a gas station.
It happened at the Petro Travel Center on Donald Lee Hollowell Road on Juneteenth.
The woman tells FOX 5 she was just there to pick up some lunch for her husband who was at work nearby, but she is now traumatized by the incident.
"Locking eyes with this man masturbating… I didn’t know how to react," Sundai Gray recalled.
A man was spotted at the Petro Travel Center on Donald Lee Hollowell Road performing a lewd act upon himself on June 19, 2024. (FOX 5)
It is a disturbing visual she says she now sees every time she closes her eyes.
"I don’t know how a person recovers or can put that out of their mind," she told FOX 5.
A trip to the Iron Skillet inside Petro Travel Center on Donald Lee Hollowell Road took a disturbing turn when she caught the man behind her in line with his pants down.
"I’m shocked, embarrassed, humiliated," the woman said.
Even more unsettling, Atlanta police say employees who saw the man performing a sex act on himself didn’t intervene and ultimately watched him walk out the door with his order.
"Not only did he come in the store and do that to my wife, but after he did that to my wife, he still went and got some food before he left," her husband, Robert Gray, told FOX 5.
Gray says when his wife called to tell him what happened, he immediately notified security and went to confront the man who’d gone to another gas station close by.
A man was spotted at the Petro Travel Center on Donald Lee Hollowell Road performing a lewd act upon himself on June 19, 2024. (FOX 5)
He says despite him asking, they never called 911.
"I’m yelling, ‘Where is this guy at?’ He said, ‘Who’? I’m like, ‘The guy masturbating on my wife.’ He says, ‘Oh, that guy is outside.’ I said, ‘What? Why you didn’t stop him?’ He was like, ‘Oh, he left the store.’"
Gray tells FOX 5 he was stunned to hear a female employee later admit she and several other women who work there had also been victimized by the same man in the last year, but his wife was the first to report it.
"He did it to another co-worker… it was in the middle of the night, and I don’t think they called either. He really don’t cause no problem, but he (does) do that," the employee stated.
A man was spotted at the Petro Travel Center on Donald Lee Hollowell Road performing a lewd act upon himself on June 19, 2024. (FOX 5)
The couple tells FOX 5 they believe different actions should have been taken.
"Security would be notified, 911 would’ve been called because I wouldn’t want anyone to feel the way I feel right now," Mrs. Gray said.
Now they are talking to attorneys about a possible lawsuit.
"It was something they could have prevented easily," her husband added.
FOX 5 reached out to Petro’s parent company, Travel Centers of America, for comment on what protocols are in place for an incident like this but have not heard back as of this publication.