Posted on 03/17/2006 6:37:49 AM PST by 300magnum
HARTSVILLE, S.C. - Had Tonya Dixon realized the man living across the street was a convicted sex offender, she says she would never have moved with her family to a mobile home in a quiet, isolated neighborhood.
Officers, bloodhounds and helicopters continued searching Thursday for 47-year-old Kenneth Glenn Hinson, who is wanted in connection with the rape of two teenage girls in an underground room behind his home.
Dixon, who moved to the neighborhood about two weeks ago, searched her computer after news of the assaults spread and found Hinson's mug shot on the state's sexual predator list.
"They need a big ol' sign in the yard letting people know," said Dixon, 29, who has three young children.
The two 17-year-olds were abducted and assaulted in a room under a shed on Hinson's property, Darlington County Chief Deputy Tom Gainey said. The girls were left bound but managed to free themselves. Gainey said they were able to open the trap door in the floor and kick down the shed's door.
The state attorney general's office said Hinson had been recommended for the state's sexually violent predator program, but was rejected during the screening process.
Hinson was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in 1991. Just before his release from prison in 2000, a review committee recommended he be committed indefinitely to a Department of Mental Health facility for treatment, said Trey Walker, a spokesman for the attorney general's office. But a circuit judge later ruled that prosecutors failed to show Hinson would likely offend again.
"We thought then that the judge made a mistake," Attorney General Henry McMaster said Friday on "Good Morning America." "I think events, if all this is true that we hear today, it appears that the man should have gone into the system, certainly."
Hinson, wanted on kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct charges, is thought to have been spotted near the Darlington-Chesterfield county line in the state's northeast corner late Wednesday, said Deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Stec. Authorities said there were several reported sightings but none were confirmed, and believe he is still in the area.
The rural road leading to Hinson's home outside Hartsville is lined with mobile homes, many of them with bikes and toys lying in the yards. The neighborhood, which one resident described as "one big family," is about 20 miles northwest of Florence where busy Interstate 95 meets Interstate 20.
Argeree Cooks, who lives with her four grandchildren down the street from Hinson's home, was worried. Her family also did not know Hinson was a sex offender, she said.
"Why couldn't they tell us?" she said. "We have seen him. They need to tell people these things."
Yep. This guy walked except for possession of gun charges because he was a convicted felon. A strange story. He served time for raping a 12 year old but a jury cleared him of these latest charges.
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