911 caller: Man pretending to be police officer tried to rape me in West Chester

West Chester police responded to a report of a shooting Saturday night and it appears there was an accidental discharge of a firearm. GREG LYNCH / STAFF

West Chester police responded to a report of a shooting Saturday night and it appears there was an accidental discharge of a firearm. GREG LYNCH / STAFF

A woman who called West Chester police Wednesday morning claimed a man impersonating a police officer beat and tried to rape her after a traffic stop on Union Centre Boulevard.

“I was just on Union Centre Road and I was stopped by someone that had like police lights on, he said he was a police officer,” the female caller tearfully told the dispatcher. “He came into my car, hit me and then he tried to rape me.”

She started to tell the dispatcher the man said he would do something to her if she tried to call anyone, but the dispatcher interrupted her by asking where she had been on Union Centre. She said she was in the Auto Zone parking lot.

The police report indicated she was assaulted, but it does not mention a rape allegation. She told the dispatcher she thought the vehicle was an SUV with red and blue lights. She said she did not need an ambulance and the incident occurred about 25 minutes before she dialed 911 at 7:30 a.m. Someone in the background corrected her saying it happened an hour earlier. The police report indicates the incident occurred at around 6:10 a.m.

Police originally told the media there was no 911 call because of the time difference between the emergency 911 call and the time of the actual incident.

“We were under the assumption this call came in on the non-emergency line because it came one-and-a-half hours after the reported time of the incident,” spokeswoman Barb Wilson said.

REPORTED EARLIER:

The suspect was wearing all black, a short sleeved shirt with no badge or identifying patches and a blue mask. He is a white male, approximately 30 years old, five feet eight inches tall, weighing around 150 to 180 pounds with brown hair in a buzz style cut. The suspect approached the female victim’s car, acting as if he was a police officer, the township’s release said.

The victim told police she was assaulted, according to the police report.

Sgt. Brent Lovell with the West Chester Police Department said that West Chester Police as well as other officers in the surrounding area only have blue lights not the red and blue lights the female reported.

Police are advising the public, in a situation when someone is stopped by police and he or she wants to verify that a law enforcement officer is making the stop, that citizens may call 9-1-1 to confirm traffic