A man accused of peeping at three teen sisters inside their Atlantic City home started attacking the court's video system with a chair after a judge ordered him to remain jailed Tuesday.
Xavier Clark, 29, of Egg Harbor Township, was appearing via video from a room at the jail where defendants appear for virtual detention hearings.
“Judge, I’m sorry,” Assistant Prosecutor Harlee Stein said, as the judge was explaining her decision to hold Clark.
"The defendant’s being removed because he just threw a chair at the system,” she said. “They’re arresting him.”
The officer could be seen cuffing Clark, as the man appeared to spit at the camera and yell. The mic to the room was muted.
Clark is accused of walking through a fenced-in gate where the three girls live last Wednesday.
The girls' mother walked into her daughters' bedroom to find Clark looking at her 14- and 16-year-old as they were getting dressed for school, according to the charges.
When the mother screamed, Clark then moved to a bathroom window, where the woman's 12-year-old daughter was showering.
"The parents are extremely concerned that this stranger is lurking around their home looking at their children," Stein told Judge Patricia Wild.
While they do not know Clark, it wasn't the family's first encounter with him, Stein said.
A day earlier, the father said he got a call from one of his daughters saying a man was following her home from school, according to the allegations.
The father told her to hide and wait for him to come, he told police. As the two were walking home, they saw Clark following them.
The father yelled at him and told him to go away, Stein said.
Clark was just sentenced to probation about a week before his latest arrest after pleading guilty to resisting arrest in a case from last year.
Stein listed a criminal history that includes theft, burglary, weapons offenses and multiple restraining orders that cited harassment, criminal mischief and terroristic threats.
"He has no history of violent convictions," defense attorney Omar Aguilar told the judge.
As he spoke, his client stood up and appeared to be yelling at the camera, although he was muted.
He then remained standing with his arms crossed through much of the hearing.
That was, until Wild made it clear that, despite the public safety assessment recommending his release, she would be ordering him held as his case goes through the system.
He then turned toward the chair, picked it up and struck it near the camera four times, stopping only when a corrections officer came in.
Clark, whose first name is listed as Zavier in the jail, will remain in the Atlantic County Justice Facility. It was not clear if he would get a charge in the jail for his actions.
The remainder of Tuesday's hearings were moved to another room in the jail as a result.
