A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty Thursday to groping three women joggers in Irvine and was sentenced to a year in jail.
Keenan Al-Sayed Ahmad was arrested in January 2018, shortly after he groped the buttocks of a woman jogging on the Jeffrey Open Space Trail, police said at the time.
Two of the attacks occurred in December 2017 in the Woodbury neighborhood, police said.
A woman jogging at Groveland and Townsend was groped between 6:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 17 by a skateboarder, police said.
About 8:15 p.m. the following day, a woman jogging at Rolling Green and Statuary was shoved down to the ground and struggled with the suspect as he tried to stop her from shouting for help by covering her mouth with his hands, police said. When that failed, he groped her before fleeing, according to police.
Ahmad pleaded guilty to a felony count of false imprisonment with violence of an elder or dependent person and three misdemeanor counts of touching an intimate part of another person. Ahmad, who will be on two years of formal probation, was ordered to report to jail by May 27.
As part of his plea deal felony counts of attempted forcible rape, assault with the intent to commit a sex offense and sexual battery were dismissed, according to court records.
In all of the attacks Ahmad was skateboarding, police said.