UNION COUNTY — A Summit man who was released from state prison on April 17, after serving three years of a six year prison sentence for kidnapping, has been arrested and charged in two separate cases of child molestation and luring a child.
Elio Pintado: accused child molester
A New York grand jury has indicted Elio Pintado, 36, in connection with the January 1 molestation of a seven-year-old girl in the restroom of the AMC Loews theater in the Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack.
Pintado was arrested in January by Berkley Heights Police on an unrelated charge of second degree luring and enticing a child, and was ordered held without bail because of a parole violation. Pintado is currently in the Union County Jail in Elizabeth.
Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe said Pintado was indicted on two counts of sexual abuse in the first degree and one count of unlawful imprisonment in the first degree, both felonies, and a misdemeanor of endangering the welfare of a child.
At about 2:30 p.m. on New Year’s Day, the girl was at the fourth-floor theater complex with her father and younger brother. The girl’s father waited nearby while she used the women’s restroom.
The girl was in the bathroom for less than three minutes when Pintado, who had entered before her, allegedly assaulted the child in a stall. Pintado, who had pulled up his collar as he entered the bathroom, was captured on surveillance video leaving the restroom seconds before the girl returned to her father.
Rockland authorities have filed an arrest warrant in New Jersey, but Pintado cannot be sent to New York until he is either sentenced or released on his New Jersey case.
If convicted of the Rockland County charge, Pintado faces up to seven years in state prison.
