Area man indicted for multiple assaults

An area man has been sentenced to prison after being indicted for sexually assaulting a woman at a Heights grocery store and attempting to assault a young girl a few days apart back in 2020, according to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

The district attorney’s office announced May 12 that Florian Kroll, 33, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to a sexual assault that occurred in the Heights on Jan. 10, 2020. He was also sentenced to 10 years for attempted sexual assault of a child just five days, later, according to the office.

Kroll’s sentences will run concurrently, according to the district attorney’s office, and he will not be eligible for parole until serving at least half of his sentence.

“This is a predator who has a pattern of attacking and hurting women when he is free to roam,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. “He has been sentenced to spend the next two decades behind bars, where he can no longer harm or victimize women.”

The sexual assault of a woman happened on Jan. 10, 2020, according to the district attorney’s office, when Kroll assaulted a woman in the elevator of an H-E-B in the Heights. Just five days later, the office said he attacked a 16-year-old girl as she walked home from school in North Houston.

Kroll - whose address is listed in court records as being in the Central Northwest area – was previously convicted on charges of indecency with a child in 2015, according to Harris County court records, and spent two years in prison. The district attorney’s office said that at the time of his arrest in 2020, Kroll had failed to register as a sex offender.

““This guilty plea puts the defendant in prison for many years and spares the victims the trauma of having to come to court to testify about their ordeals,” said Assistant District Attorney Tiera Johnson-Williams, who prosecuted the cases.