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Woman: Man ripped off bikini bottom at OB Pier

Posted at 10:43 PM, Feb 16, 2016
and last updated 2016-02-17 08:03:05-05

A man is in jail, being charged with sexual battery, after a woman says he ripped her bathing suit off.

"I cried for the first two days and didn't talk to nobody very much," Kyli Harbaugh said through tears. "Like now, if I talk about it I'll cry and I won't come down [to Ocean Beach] by myself which sucks because I live here."

It's still hard for her to talk about what happened last Wednesday at the Ocean Beach Pier.

"I just wanted to run. I didn't know what to do. I didn't feel rage or anger. I just was super scared," she said. "That was scary."

Harbaugh was listening to music, wearing her bathing suit, when a man sat down beside her and tried to strike up a conversation. She says when she brushed him off, he didn't take it well.

"So I was putting my headphone back in my ear and he grabs my bottoms and rips them off," Harbaugh said. "So I yell at him. And I tell him to get away from me. You can't touch people without their permission."

Several people wrestled the man to the ground before he could get away. Paul Malcolm is now being charged with sexual battery. He spoke to 10News in a jailhouse interview.

“I didn’t think it was that intense," Malcolm said. "I’m a pretty touchy-feely kind of guy, but like the thing is it wasn’t anything malicious."

Now Harbaugh is sharing her story to warn other women; she also has a strong message for Malcolm.

"Go away," she said through tears. "What are you doing? Why would you cause that to someone else, why would you do that to someone else? Why would you ever scare anybody?  What is the point in that? Leave."

Malcolm admits he was high on marijuana at the time. He says he will be released in March.