(As originally published, Thu, September 14th 2023, 3:03 PM EDT; first article here)
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (WPEC/TND) — A Florida man is accused of recording his female roommate in the nude when she walked into her bedroom after taking a shower.
Hugo Quinones-Cuero, 30, was arrested Friday and charged with video voyeurism on the teenager, a crime that West Palm Beach police said happened in the afternoon of Aug. 5.
According to the arrest report, “[The victim] said she works at a restaurant during the evenings and likes to take a shower prior to leaving for her shift. [The victim] said while in the shower, her roommate and friend Hugo Stephen Quinones-Cuero entered her bedroom.
“According to [the victim], Quinones-Cuero grabbed his cell phone, placed it in video mode, then hid the phone underneath her pillows in an attempt to record her changing without her knowledge.”
The document went on to explain when the woman got to her room, she noticed her pillows had been rearranged, so she fixed them. That’s when she found her roommate’s hidden phone recording her.
She took the phone, stopped the recording, and texted about seven minutes of video to her own phone.
Days later, the victim and police decided to use a controlled phone call with Quinones-Cuero to get a confession.
Documents say she started “by asking Quinones-Cuero why he would record her.”
His answer: “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know what was going on in my head.
“Later in the call, he states, ‘I wanted to see you.’
“She replied with, ‘You wanted to see me naked.’
“He replied, ‘Why else would I do that?'”
He reportedly apologized after that.
Then, police described the video, saying Quinones-Cuero could clearly be seen setting up his phone and then walking out of the victim’s room.
Finally, the report said when detectives spoke with him at his home, he told them, “He wanted to know what she was doing because she was arriving home late and wanted to know who she was talking to.”
But he confessed in the end.
In the report, the police define the charge of video voyeurism as, “If that person, for his or her own amusement, entertainment, sexual arousal, gratification, or profit, or for the purpose of degrading or abusing another person, intentionally uses or installs an imaging device to secretly view, broadcast, or record a person, without that person’s knowledge and consent, who is dressing, undressing, or privately exposing the body, at a place and time when that person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Quinones-Cuero was charged with one count of video voyeurism on a person younger than 19. He was released from jail less than three hours later on his own recognizance.
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WPEC’s Troy Myers contributed to this report.
