Man Arrested for Groping Multiple Women on Subway During 5-Year Span: Police

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A man who groped women on the train during the span of five years has been arrested and is facing charges, police told Patch.

Kenneth Jacobson, 44, of the Bronx has been charge with five counts of forcible touching, five counts of harassment and two counts of sex abuse, police said. Jacobson would approach women on the train, sit next to them, and then proceed to rub them on the thigh, police told Patch.

Jacobson — who has been accused of five different assaults — was arrested Monday around 5:45 p.m., police said.

The three most recent incidents happened in mid- to late-September.

On Sept. 19, the man got on a 1 train at the 66th Street station on the Upper West Side and sat next to a 24-year-old woman at 5:40 p.m. He rubbed the outside of her thigh on the moving 1 train, police said. Just a few days later, on Sept. 21, Jacobson sat down next to an 18-year-old woman on a 1 train running from 50th Street to Times Square and touched her thigh, police said.

Jacobson's most recent assault took place Sept. 29, at 6:45 p.m. when he sat next to an 18-year-old woman at the 42nd Street 1 train station and rubbed the inside of the woman's thigh, police said.

Police believe this is the same man who they were searching for five years ago in a similar incident on a 1 train at 110th Street. That incident happened sometime in late 2011 or early 2012 when the same man rubbed the inside of a 13-year-old girl's thigh, according to police. The Daily News reports the then-13-year-old and the 18-year-old are twin sisters and the woman assaulted five years ago recognized the man in a photo taken by her sister after last month's incident.

Since Jacobson's arrest he has been implicated in another 2011 assault that occurred in June. Jacobson boarded a 1 train at Penn Station, sat down next to a 31-year-old woman and then touched her on the thigh, police said.

Photo: NYPD