Cops: Kids on bicycles are assaulting women

Someone may have taught these kids how to ride a bicycle, but they sure didn't teach them any manners.

According to police, on three separate occasions over Sunday and Monday, groups of young teenage boys have indecently assaulted grown women as they rode past them on their bicycles.

In the one instance where the victim tried to call police to report the incident while the teens were still on the scene, she was physically assaulted, authorities said.

The first case occurred around 3 p.m. Sunday as a 29-year-old woman was walking with her boyfriend along the Schuylkill River Trail in West Philadelphia. According to police, the couple was harassed by a group of four juveniles who were approximately 13 years old. One of the boys indecently assaulted the woman before the group rode off, but police did not detail the nature of the assault.

Just 25 minutes later, a 19-year-old woman who was walking on 32nd Street near Market in University City reported that a group of six-to-eight boys on bicycles who were between the ages of 12 and 15 began harassing her and making rude comments about her Asian heritage, police said. When one of the boys slapped the woman's buttocks, she tried to use her cell phone to call police but was physically assaulted by one of the children before they all rode away.

Around 6:15 p.m. Monday, a 27-year-old woman was walking on Delaware Avenue near Poplar Street in Old City when three juvenile boys on bicycles rode up alongside her and slapped her buttocks as they passed, police said.

A police spokeswoman said it's unclear whether the assaults were committed by the same group of kids or different ones, but she did say tha the incidents are "happening more frequently."

Anyone with information on these incidents or the identity of the children is urged to call the department's tip line at 215-686-8477.