Queens man charged in groping incident

An Astoria man, picked out of a lineup in Brooklyn, was charged with sexual abuse and forcible touching for the May 7 incident in which a woman was groped as she swiped a MetroCard at a subway turnstile in Park Slope, the NYPD said Tuesday night.

Joshua Flecha, 32, of 29-06 Crescent St., Queens, was originally arrested early Monday on drug charges, a police spokesman said, by anti-crime officers who spotted him walking slowly on 17th Street by some parked cars between 10th and 11th avenues.

Officers suspected that he might have been attempting to break into the cars and, after searching him, they found marijuana in his possession, according to police.

The officers thought the man resembled the sketch of a suspect in the May groping incident, in which he also exposed himself to the woman. They noticed that a cellphone in his hand was playing a pornographic video and his pants were unzipped, the police spokesman said.

The NYPD said in a statement that Flecha was a suspect in connection with a pattern of recent sex crimes in Brooklyn.

In a separate development, officers apprehended a bicyclist seen riding up onto a sidewalk at Broadway and 31st Street in the Long Island City area early Tuesday morning while a woman was apparently screaming at him, a high-ranking police official said.

A recent spate of groping incidents in Queens involved a man on a black mountain bike.

The cyclist, who wasn't identified, has gray tape over a black mountain bike.

He was taken to a local precinct to join a lineup related to the attacks, said the official, who did not want to be identified.

By the time officers returned to where the woman was screaming, she had left the area, the official said.

With Bill Mason