A male model accused of raping a woman after a boozy night out in Manhattan is said to have apologised to his alleged victim because he thought he got into bed with her roommate.
Henry Romero, 34, of Queens, New York, is charged with forcing himself upon a sleeping woman on March 21 in their Hells Kitchen apartment.
The woman said she woke up from a deep slumber about 6am to find Romero on top of her and sexually assaulting her, the
New York Post
reported.
When the 31-year-old woman screamed "Get off me! Get off me!" he is alleged to have apologised and said, "I thought you were [the woman's roommate]."
The two women had been out the night of March 21 with Romero and a bunch of other friends.
One of the women, who had been Romero's date, agreed to let him sleep on her living room floor to avoid the long ride back to Queens from Manhattan.
But then she said she got a bad feeling from him when he began "acting creepy".
"He said, 'I want you to dance for me - that's why I brought you here" the woman told the Post. "The way he said it was just weird."
She decided to head home leaving Romero at the bar, but that didn't stop him from taking her up on her offer to sleep over.
The woman said she went to get something to eat, then made her way to her apartment in Hells Kitchen.
When she arrived, she found Romero asleep in the living room and her roommate, who was visiting from another country, not in her own bed, but in the woman's bed instead.
The woman said she took her roommate's bed but was woken up a few hours later by the screams of her housemate.
"He went into my room, thinking it was me!' the first woman told the outlet.
She said that after she heard him apologise to her roommate, the shocked housemate yelled that there's no way he could have confused the two woman, since one has black hair, and one has blond hair.
Romero is free on a US$3000 ($4100) bond. He has pleaded not guilty.
The suspect was signed with Abrams Artists Agency. It's unclear if he still is.