Police search for Beall's store cell phone voyeur

[Images courtesy St. Petersburg Police Department]

ST. PETERSBURG -- Police are searching for a man who used a cell phone camera to take lewd photographs of women in a local Beall's department store.

Police say the man put his cell phone under a bathroom stall door in the store at 7899 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. on Wednesday and took a picture of an 11-year-old girl. When the girl told her mother that someone had taken her picture, they saw a middle-aged man standing nearby, staring at his camera, police said. The man ran away when he saw them looking at him.

On April 5, police spokesman Bill Proffitt said, the man came up behind a woman who was leaning over a display in the women's lingerie and handbag area and took a photograph of her by putting a cell phone under her skirt.

"This is somebody we would like to identify," Proffitt said.

Click here to see footage of the man from the store's surveillance cameras. Police are asking anyone with information about the man or similar incidents to call (727) 893-7780.

Abhi Raghunathan and Casey Cora, Times staff writers