STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A convicted felon from Staten Island was arrested for breaking into a West Village apartment through a fire escape and groping a sleeping woman, police allege.
The incident occurred at 5:10 a.m. last Thursday in the vicinity of Hudson Street and West 10th Street, according to police.
Authorities say Jeffrey Joseph, 35, entered the residential building through the front door, and once inside, climbed the fire escape and entered the woman's second-floor apartment.
The intruder then grabbed the sleeping 43-year-old woman's buttocks, and fled after she woke up, police said.
Police arrested and charged Joseph with burglary and sex abuse days after releasing a surveillance image of the suspect to the public.
Police said Joseph lives in New Dorp Beach, but public records list an address in Brooklyn.
Joseph, who has a lengthy rap sheet, was arrested previously in December 2014 in connection with a string of Christmastime burglaries, a law enforcement source said.
In those incidents, Joseph, who was living in Brooklyn at the time, was accused of striking four Staten Island homes, grabbing delivery boxes full of jewelry, designer clothes and ornaments from doorsteps, according to a previous Advance report.
He pleaded guilty to petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property and was sentenced to nine months in jail, a law enforcement source said.
Joseph was also arrested on similar charges earlier that year for allegedly stealing a package with an accomplice from a Rossville doorstep, only to have police track him with a GPS device inside, according to the report.
In that case, Joseph pleaded guilty to petit larceny and was sentenced to four months in jail, according to the report.
A law enforcement source told the Advance Joseph has racked up more than three dozen arrests so far, and public records show he was sentenced to two to four years in state prison after being convicted of robbery, drug dealing and possession of stolen property in Brooklyn in 2007.