Convicted sex offender returns kidnapped boy to mom
Sep 4, 2012, 11:28 AM | Updated: 1:03 pm
A kidnapping case in Fife ended when a 7-year-old boy was returned by a convicted sex offender.
It all started Monday night when the boy’s mother had an ex-boyfriend at her hotel room visiting her and her son. Mom decided to take a shower and when she got out, her ex, her son, and $900 in cash were gone.
The 41-year-old man had a significant arrest record. Just last week he was released from jail after serving time for a domestic violence assault charge. Still, the boy’s mother told detectives she was surprised by his actions.
“They’ve had an on again, off again kind of relationship so it wasn’t uncommon for him to be there. She said they had a good relationship. It really surprised her that he had done this,” said Lt. Tom Thompson with the Fife Police Department.
When she discovered her son missing, mom waited a few minutes, thinking her ex might have taken him to the store and would be back shortly. When they did not return, the child’s mother called her ex’s cell phone. At first, he told her he would bring the boy back eventually. Then he stopped answering her phone calls altogether.
“He took the child to a neighborhood that he knew close to his mother’s home,” says Lt. Thompson. “The boy was getting a little bit restless, and so the brother offered to take him up to a nearby bowling alley and play some video games. That’s what they’re telling us.”
The brother that the child was with was a convicted sex offender, wanted by University Place Police for failing to register.
Fife police officers were still at the hotel in the 5200 block of 20th Street East when the brother and the little boy pulled up in a taxi cab.
“My understanding […] was that the child was starting to get a little rambunctious and that he basically just wanted to take him back to mom,” Lt. Thompson says.
The boy was in good spirits and seemed to be unharmed. The man with him was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender.
Officers caught up with the ex-boyfriend in University Place at the same address where his earlier domestic violence assault had occurred. He was arrested for kidnapping and theft.
