Man attacks and gropes woman while she showers at LA Fitness gym, Georgia police say

A woman was in the middle of showering when she was attacked and groped inside the locker room of an Atlanta-area LA Fitness, according to police. Now, a Georgia man has been charged.

Matthew Carlisle, 31, faces a count of felony peeping tom and sexual battery after authorities said he assaulted a woman at the popular gym on Terrell Mill Road in Marietta, according to a police report obtained by McClatchy News. Officers were alerted to the incident Thursday, Aug. 25, just before 9:30 p.m.

Carlisle, who accessed the gym using a visitor’s pass, told police he had been swimming and denied going into the women’s locker room, authorities said.

Officers also spoke with the woman, 39, who said she and her husband were soaking in the hot tub when Carlisle walked over and joined them. Carlisle started talking but “wasn’t making much sense,” the woman said. At one point, he asked her husband if she was his friend.

The couple left the tub, after which the woman went into the locker room to shower, according to the police report. She got into the first stall and began rinsing off when she says Carlisle yanked back the curtain and “grabbed her breast while pushing her into the wall.”

The woman was able to shove him away, causing Carlisle to trip and fall, police said. That’s when she ran and screamed for help.

McClatchy News reached out to LA Fitness for comment on Wednesday, Aug. 31 and was awaiting a response.

News of the attack shocked gym goers and left them feeling unsafe.

“Really disturbing because a lot of people come into this gym every day to work out,” one person who works out at the gym told WAGA. “I’d be very, very, very creeped out and afraid.”

“I wouldn’t of thought that anything like that would actually take place at an LA Fitness, being that so many people are here and everybody’s going in and out,” another person told WSB-TV.

Carlisle remained in the Cobb County Adult Detention Center as of Wednesday, Aug. 31, on a $5,000 bond, booking records show.

Marietta is about 20 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta.

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