Missing sex offender surrenders in state
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008
SEATTLE — A registered sex offender who lived under a bridge in Snohomish County, Wash., for three days before cutting off his state-issued GPS tracking ankle bracelet and disappearing turned himself in to police in Arkansas on Friday, according to the U. S. Marshals Service.
David Torrence, 43, had been released from prison April 20 after serving a one-year sentence for failing to register as a sex offender.
Washington state Department of Corrections officials could not find adequate housing for him, so he was fitted with the tracking device, given a sleeping bag and permitted to live beneath the bridge less than five miles from the home of a woman he raped in 1995.
After Torrence’s disappearance in late April, the woman he raped 13 years ago learned that he’d been living close to her. She said it angered her that the Department of Corrections did not let her know his whereabouts.
On Friday the woman said it relieved her to hear that Torrence was back behind bars.
“I hope he is incarcerated for a very long time,” she said.
Torrence is believed to have fled to live with family in Camden, authorities said.
The head of Washington prisons has since ordered that victims of sex crimes be notified when those convicted of attacks remove their GPS tracking devices.
Torrence was among 90 sex offenders assigned to GPS monitoring since the program began late last year, according to the prison system. Of those offenders, at least four have removed their ankle bracelets.
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