ST. GEORGE, Utah, Oct. 18, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — A 42-year-old registered sex offender was taken back to jail after St. George police say he tried to get two 8-year-old girls to leave their jewelry stand and come with him.
The incident happened at about 4:20 p.m. on Oct. 13, a Thursday, James Gwilliam’s probable cause statement says. The girls were selling jewelry on a street corner, “and a male had approached them and asked them to go with him to clean a church,” court documents say.
The suspect purchased several items, including “including a Maui bracelet, a Starbucks phone case, a sticker pack, and a kind of silly putty” before asking for the girls’ help at “the church,” the statement says. The “male said he could take her stuff with her.”
The girls ran to one of their houses to get away.
On Monday of this week, the complainant reported she had show the girls pictures of local sex offenders, and they identified Gwilliam as the man who approached them.
Gwilliam was booked into the Purgatory Correctional Facility by Adult Probation and Parole for parole violations related to the incident. As of Tuesday afternoon, he was still incarcerated.
Gwilliam was previously found guilty in a 2002 case in Salt Lake County. He was convicted in 2003 of forcible sexual abuse, according to records, and was released from prison in 2012.
