A 24-year-old man is accused of having sex with a 14-year-old at the Occupy Dallas campground near Dallas City Hall, Dallas police said.
Dallas police said Richard Wayne Armstrong, a sex offender, was arrested Sunday on suspicion of having sex with a 14-year-old runaway.
Police said the girl told Armstrong and others at the Occupy Dallas camp that she was 19.
"You know, different people can see it different ways, but once you talked with her, I think it's a little obvious she is much younger than she said," Deputy Chief Sherryl Scott said.
Officers located the girl after receiving information on Oct. 23 that a girl at the camp matched the description of a runaway from Garland.
The girl told detectives she had sex with a 24-year-old man in a tent at the Occupy Dallas encampment.
Police located and questioned Armstrong and discovered he had failed to register as a sex offender after he recently got out of jail in Big Sandy.
Armstrong is charged with failure to register as a sex offender and sexual assault of a child, both felonies. He was taken to Lew Sterrett Jail and was still in custody Tuesday night.
His bond was set at $200,000.
People at the camp said they do not question protesters about their backgrounds.
"We have opened a call to say, 'This is the movement of all people,' so it's hard to say anyone is not part of this movement," Occupy Dallas protester Andrew Louis Davis said.
Dallas police appear to be warning people that there are children at the camp.
Members of Occupy Dallas said teenage runaways and sex offenders are not welcome.
"This situation is not one that we would have wanted to have happen, but it is something that we needed to learn," demonstrator Sarah Peace said. "We're all actually here for beautiful ideas and dreams that we have."
Occupy Dallas has a 60-day permit that allows the camp to remain behind City Hall until mid-December.
NBC 5's Ken Kalthoff and Ellen Goldberg contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment