CLEVELAND (WJW) – The FOX 8 I-Team has obtained video showing what happened when a man attacked a teen girl in the terminal at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
City officials just released security video and police body camera video from the incident, which happened in July.
The video shows a 17-year-old girl moving up in line toward security south checkpoint line when a man moves very close to her and starts talking to her.
Then, the man in the video tries to hug the girl. You can see the girl try to push the man away, but he won’t let go.
On the video clip released by the city, you don’t see what happened next. Police say a witness got involved by stepping in to get the teen girl out of the hands of the man who’d grabbed her.
A short time later, Cleveland Police spotted the man outside the terminal.
An officer said, “Did you grab some girl’s butt? Did you touch some girl?”
The man answered, “The girl and me was dating.”
The officer then responds, “You were dating her?”
And, the man answers, “Yeah.”
Police say the teen did not know the man grabbing her. She lives in Northeast Ohio, and records show an address for the man, identified as David Harze, in New York.
The teen told police he asked for her phone number.
Based on the video, Harze could not answer a basic question from police.
An officer asked, “You know her name?”
Harze then said, “Huh?”
The officer responds, “Do you know her name? You said you were dating. I’m assuming you know her name.”
We reached out to Harze by phone and he called back. We asked why he put his hands on the teen.
“I did not abuse her. I grabbed her to keep the hug longer. I wanted to hug her longer,” he said.
Then, he admitted, “I just met her at the airport. I didn’t know her before that.”
Cuyahoga County prosecutors have now indicted Harze for abduction and assault.
Defense attorney Walt Edwards spoke briefly about Harze, saying, “He is pleading not guilty and I expect some resolution to the case soon.”
Before the I-Team hung up with Harze, we pointed out that he never said anything about being sorry.
He reacted with, “Sorry for what?”
He also never clearly explained to us what he was doing in Cleveland, but now he has to come back here to face a judge.
