Delivery driver accused of burglary in Suffield, sexual assault in East Granby
May 6—A man who has worked as a DoorDash food delivery driver is accused of breaking into a Suffield apartment and confronting a woman at her bedroom door — and, some seven weeks earlier, of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl as she slept in her East Granby home.
PREDAWN INCIDENTS
DEFENDANT: Justin Sladyk, 20, of East Granby.
CHARGES: Second-degree sexual assault and voyeurism in incident at 4:43 a.m. July 13, 2021, in an East Granby home; second-degree burglary and second-degree stalking in an incident around 3:30 a.m. Aug. 30, 2021, at a Suffield apartment.
STATUS: Free on $600,000 bond; next due June 8 in Hartford Superior Court.
The man, Justin Sladyk, 20, of East Granby, is free on $600,000 bond while the cases are pending in Hartford Superior Court, online records show.
He is facing charges of second-degree burglary and second-degree stalking in the Suffield incident, which occurred in the predawn hours of Aug. 30, 2021.
Suffield police say he confessed to entering the apartment by opening a window and unlatching a security chain.
In the July 13, 2021, incident in East Granby, Sladyk is charged with second-degree sexual assault on grounds that the 17-year-old was sleeping and "physically helpless" when he performed a sex act on her. He is also charged with voyeurism on grounds that he made a video recording of the sexual assault.
The police investigations of Sladyk began Aug. 30, when residents of the apartment reported the break-in. A responding officer saw a gray sport utility vehicle fleeing westward from the apartment complex parking lot at high speed but lost sight of it because of the speed and the driver turning off the headlights, according to a report by Suffield police Detective Shawn St. John.
The detective went on to report the following:
One of the victims told police that the intruder might be a DoorDash employee who had delivered food to her several weeks earlier, and she produced an emailed receipt that included the driver's first name, Justin. Police contacted DoorDash and learned that the driver's full name was Justin Sladyk, also getting his address and telephone number.
Sladyk told officers that he had been at a friend's house in Winsted, drinking beer and smoking marijuana, from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.
When he arrived back in the area, Sladyk said, he decided he wanted to talk to one of the residents of the apartment about a message she had posted on Facebook. The post was about a DoorDash driver coming back to her apartment after a delivery and trying to "shoot his shot" with her, meaning he tried to get her contact information.
Sladyk said several people responded to the post and made him look bad.
He acknowledged that he knew nobody would be up at 3:30 a.m. But he said he let himself into the apartment, walked upstairs, and opened a bedroom door using his cellphone flashlight. He said he found the woman standing in front of him, adding that she tried to spray him with Mace and that he pushed her to the floor and fled.
During the investigation, Suffield police got a search warrant for Sladyk's phone and found a video of him sexually assaulting the sleeping 17-year-old at 4:43 a.m. July 13, according to a report by state Trooper First Class Andrew J. Crook, who went on to report the following:
In a subsequent exchange of text messages with the girl's father, Sladyk said, "I wasn't fully there after having drinks." But he added, "I wasn't up to much of anything" and later denied to police that he knew anything about the video on his phone.
The girl and her parents decided at first not to report the incident to police because they lacked corroborative evidence, but she decided to press charges after learning of the video.
A message left at the law firm representing Sladyk, Tarpey & Alexander, wasn't returned.
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