Jun. 19—Tiffany Owenby had stopped at the Balsam rest area in Haywood County dozens of times in her life and always felt safe, so she thought nothing of the man sleeping in his car as she pulled in with her two kids, even though it was getting close to midnight.

“I have never been uncomfortable stopping there,” Owenby said. “And in your hometown you feel comfortable. It’s a small town and you think nothing is ever going to happen there.”

That soon changed, however, when a few minutes later she exited the restroom with her daughter to find her 13-year-old son, hysterical, and on the phone with 911.

While her son was finishing up in the restroom, an older man had crawled under the partition and into her son’s bathroom stall.

“The guy had army crawled under one stall and was half way under my son’s stall and starts grabbing his at his legs,” Owenby said. “He was fear frozen at first and couldn’t move or speak. Then instinct kicked in and he started kicking at him.”

Her son had his back against the wall with nowhere to go.

“The guy crawled out backwards really fast, and my son chases him out the door,” Owenby recounted. “He is already on the phone with the police by the time I come out, and the guy is sideways going out of the parking lot.”

While Owenby grew up here, she now lives in Marshall. That night in late May, she was making a delivery of cancer IV medication to a patient in Bryson City — a line of work that entails travel across WNC on demand. Her kids, up for the road trip, had come along.

She and her daughter had gone into the women’s room, while her son went into the men’s room.

“The audacity for this man to do that with me across the hallway,” Owenby said.

After the incident, a deputy from the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office soon arrived at the rest area and took a report. Later, they were contacted by a detective, and then asked to come in for a formal video interview at KARE. The child abuse advocacy nonprofit is used as a safe setting when child victims need to meet with law enforcement.

Luckily, a camera in the rest area had captured an image of the man getting down on his knees, visible just inside the entrance to the men’s restroom. The sheriff’s office posted the image on social media asking for the public’s help identifying him.

Charges have now been brought against Darrin Rich of Haywood County, who was charged with two counts of misdemeanor secret peeping.

Owenby is glad for the charges, but says it’s not enough. She hopes more charges will be forthcoming after the district attorney reviews the case.

“My son cried for the next two hours. He was absolutely terrified. He went to bed with his shoes on that night,” Owenby said, adding she took him to a counselor the next day. “There will be seem trauma from this, and he is not an easily scared kid. He is not timid.”

That’s witnessed by the fact her son chased the man down while calling 911 instead of running into the restroom nextdoor where his mom and sister were.

“I lectured him not to ever chase anybody again,” Owenby said.

After being arrested Monday morning, Rich made his $5,000 bail and has been released from the Haywood County Detention Center.