Sex pest smashed mother's face after she confront him masturbating in a supermarket car park

A violent sex pest broke a mother-of-three's face in four places after she tried to stop him masturbating is a supermarket car park. Police are on the hunt for a man in his 20s or 30s who battered Amanda Edwards, 35, on 13 November.

The victim had been grocery shopping for her family at a Safeway in Washington and was just leaving when a man drove up beside her and asked for directions – while masturbating.

She screamed at him, telling him to go away. He began laughing and then drove towards a mother and child.

Bravely, Amanda intervened: she yelled across to the other woman, warning her that the man was fondling himself. She also tried to take a picture of his registration.

The man sped away, leaving Amanda thinking that the unsavory episode had come to an end.

She was wrong: As she walked home, the man pounced on her, Q13 reports.

"The next thing I know I was waking up on the ground [before] running home. I didn't realize I had been hit multiple times in my face," she said.

"It definitely wasn't a fair fight," she added as tears dripped on her bruised and swollen cheeks. Her face was broken in four places, including the roof of her mouth.

Now Amanda is terrified that she will be targeted again by her assailant, who was driving a white four-door sedan car with extensive damage to the passenger side

Police are doing everything they can to track down the violent pervert. One theory is that he attacked Amanda because she had tried to warn others about his predatory behaviour.

It is a criminal offence to masturbate at another person in every US state. Amanda said: "You have to have a pretty crazy mind to go around and think that it's OK to do something like that," said Edwards.

"He was extremely aggressive and when he came up and he said 'I got you' and when he started laughing--it was one of the most evil laughs I've heard," Edwards described. "I mean to me he had a rapist mentality."