Police have arrested a suspect in a string of sexual assaults in the East Village, after a taxi drive stopped the man following an alleged attack last week. NY1’s Bobby Cuza filed the following report.

For Adil Aboussalham, it was the end of another long 12-hour shift. He was driving his cab up 1st Avenue at about 5 a.m. Friday, headed back home to Queens, when he heard a woman screaming, and saw a man fleeing the scene. When he pulled over to see what was going on, the man hopped in the backseat.

"The guy, he jumped in my cab and he told me, ‘Go! Go! Go,’” said Aboussalham. “So as he told me, ‘Go! Go,’ I turned off my engine. I jumped out from the cab, I said 'Sir, the girl, she's all bloody. We cannot leave the scene like that.’"

Aboussalham was then joined by others in preventing the man from getting out of the taxi, including another cabbie who pulled up and helped block him in and the victim herself, despite having blood on her face and knees.

"The girl, she came and she told me, 'Please, I'm begging you, don't move. This guy, he bashed me, he do something bad to me.’ I said, ‘Okay, I'm not going to move. We're going to call the police,” he said.

The man arrested – Luis Garcia Ponce – is according to authorities, a man they've been trying to catch for several months. They believe he's responsible for a whole string of sexual assaults throughout the East Village dating back to July, and they say, several victims have come forward to identify him.

Garcia Ponce is now being held without bail and faces seven charges of sexual assault, in addition to charges of robbery, burglary and criminal possession of stolen property.

Aboussalham, who was called to testify before a grand jury Wednesday, says he's no hero. He was just helping a woman in need.

"That girl could be my sister, could be my wife, whatever,” he said. “So if you see something like that, you have to help people." 

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