RPD: Do you know this man?

Jennifer Lewke

[anvplayer video=”5093528″ station=”998131″]

***Friday Update: Rochester Police say they received several tips after this story aired, but have made no arrests. Anyone with information is still asked to call 911.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Rochester Police are looking for your help in identifying a suspect in several crimes and suspicious incidents on Park Avenue. RPD says the crimes have occurred over the last year at a residence on the 1100 block of Park Avenue.

The suspect is accused of smashing windows of the home with a metal pole, breaking into the home and smashing cabinets before getting into an altercation with one of the residents. He’s driven vehicles up the driveway and crashed them into parked cars and he nearly killed the dog.

The attacks began about a year ago. A white man, suspected to be in his 20s, came through the backyard and used a metal pole to smash out windows in the home that Miguel and Peter share along Park Avenue.

“When the police came they said does this have anything to do with the thing that’s spray-painted on the driveway and we’re like what are you talking about,” Peter recalled.

“And that’s when we saw the message that was spray-painted on the driveway that says ‘Next is a firebomb parasites,’” Miguel recalled.

Forty-eight hours after that, another attack.

Surveillance video shows the intruder coming up their back staircase and telling their dog, Oskar, to sit before kicking him repeatedly. He then uses a pole to break the glass door and come inside. He was smashing the cabinets with the same pole when Miguel came into the room to confront him.

“I don’t know what I was thinking I was going to do, this person is all dressed up in crazy commando thing with a pole and so, I’m standing there and I try to get the mask off him the best way I could, it’s not like I’m a strong person so he hits me on the arm and he hits me on the head and I fall backwards toward the desk,” Miguel said.

In the video, you can see Miguel go after the intruder but he had been injured and wasn’t able to keep up. When he came back up the stairs to assess the damage, he found Oskar near death.

“We had to take him to Cornell, he was a week in the hospital and then a week in rehab there,” Peter said.

That was not the last encounter.

“From May until July, he attempted several times to smash the house by motor vehicle, first by a truck and then by passenger cars attacks,” Peter said.

Surveillance video shows three separate attacks where a vehicle comes racing up the driveway. In two instances it runs into the parked vehicles in the driveway.

Then, in January the man returned. Surveillance video shows he cuts through deer fencing that had been put up in the backyard to try and prevent him from approaching the house and then hops over barriers that had been placed on the porch with a knife in his hand. He attempts to open the door but leaves when it is locked.

Miguel and Peter aren’t sure who the suspect is because every time they’ve seen him, including when he was driving the cars, he’s been wearing a facemask but they’re not going to be scared away from the home they’ve worked to build.

“I worked so hard, day and night to finally get to this point where now it’s like for the first time, it’s that place that I always imagined and I’m finally here just so, I can’t just leave it and run away,” Miguel said.

The Rochester Police Department has been investigating for nearly a year. Investigators tell News10NBC they believe this house, in particular, is being targeted and they’re asking neighbors, particularly those who live on the 1000 block of Park Avenue to review the photos of the suspect to see if they can make a positive identification. RPD won’t speculate on a possible motive.

Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or 311 and ask to speak with a Patrol Section Investigations Supervisor. You can also email PSI@CityofRochester.Gov.