South Charleston, W. Va. ? A man suspected of posing as a security guard to sexually assault an 11-year-old girl at a Target store was captured Wednesday as he left a lawyer’s office in Kentucky, authorities said.

Later in the day, Allen Dwayne Coates was booked in a similar incident involving a 9-year-old girl at a Wal-Mart store in Kentucky.

Coates, 37, of Irvington, Ky., was arrested without incident and was being held on charges of first-degree sexual assault and kidnapping related to the West Virginia case, police said.

South Charleston Police Chief David Dunlap said an anonymous tip from a person in Kentucky led to the arrest. He credited the capture to a grainy surveillance video from the department store.

“They saw it, they saw the individual on the news,” Dunlap said of the tipster.

“It’s a burden lifted. I’m sure the community will be elated that this predator is no longer on the streets,” he added.

Police said the girl was assaulted Saturday at the South Charleston store after she and her mother separated to do individual shopping.

The tape showed a man stalking a young girl and then walking quickly down an aisle in another department, leading a girl by her wrist.

Police said the man, posing as a security guard, told the girl he saw her steal something, pulled a knife and forced her to the store’s garden department, where he assaulted her.

In the Ashland, Ky., incident, a 9-year-old girl who wandered away from her mother on Friday was approached by a man who identified himself as a security guard. The man patted the girl down, and she became suspicious and ran to her mother.

Ashland police said they charged Coates with first-degree attempted sodomy.