BUFFALO, N.Y. — Crime Stoppers Western New York is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to the arrest of Adolphus Nelson.

Nelson is wanted for absconding parole; a warrant has been issued for his arrest. Crime Stoppers says Nelson is a level two registered sex offender and should be considered dangerous.

Nelson is a Black man who is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs about 200 pounds.

Anyone with information about Nelson’s whereabouts is asked to contact Crime Stoppers Western New York at (716) 867-6161 or submit a tip by downloading the free Crime Stoppers Mobile App “Buffalo Tips.”

Charges carry penalty of up to life in federal prison

A Florida man has been arraigned in U.S. District Court on charges related to his alleged attempts to coerce a minor to engage in sexual activity.

Gordon T. Cooper, 46, of Clermont, Fla., appeared in a virtual hearing before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Brian K. Epps regarding his indictment on charges of Attempted Coercion and Enticement, and Transfer of Obscene Matter to a Minor, said Bobby L. Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. The maximum penalty for the charges are up to life in prison and substantial fines and penalties, followed by a registration as a sex offender and a period of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system.

“Our law enforcement partners remain vigilant in monitoring cyber traffic for predators targeting vulnerable citizens, especially children,” said U.S. Attorney Christine. “Likewise, our office continues to be aggressive in prosecuting those found responsible for illegal online activities.”

According to court documents and testimony, the investigation began when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was alerted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about online traffic targeting a minor who resides in Columbia County. The messages were attempting to induce the minor to engage in illegal sexual activity and shared obscene material with the minor. GBI investigators monitoring the messages identified and arrested Cooper.

“This indictment illustrates the great work of law enforcement to investigate and prosecute crimes against children,” said Vic Reynolds, Director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. “The GBI is committed to working with our local, state, and federal partners to ensure that child sexual exploitation cases are aggressively pursued.”

Criminal indictments contain only charges; defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

This investigation took place under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood (PSC). The case is being investigated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and prosecuted for the United States by Assistant U.S. Attorney and PSC Coordinator Tara M. Lyons.

WICHITA, Kan. — A registered sex offender has been charged with raping a 7-year-old girl in a stranger’s Wichita apartment six weeks after he was freed from prison for another rape.

Corbin Breitenbach, 23, was charged Tuesday with attempted capital murder, aggravated criminal sodomy and aggravated burglary.

Breitenbach said little during his first appearance other than to ask his bond amount. When he was told it was $1 million, he shook his head.

The Wichita Eagle reports the registered sex offender was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison for choking and raping a 22-year-old woman in 2012.

He was released April 28 on the condition that he report to a parole officer after receiving credit for participating in a rehabilitation or treatment program. He could have been released as early as December but wasn’t because of 32 prison disciplinary reports, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.

The latest attack happened in the early morning hours of June 11. Police said the suspect entered the apartment where the girl was staying for the night without forcing entry and without permission. He did not know the girl, reports the Wichita Eagle.

Charging documents said Breitenbach removed the girl from a bedroom, choked her until she was unconscious, raped her on an outdoor balcony and left.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said he saw the girl on Tuesday and that she is doing “better” and has been out of the hospital for days.

The condo where she was attacked is directly across a small courtyard from where Breitenbach’s girlfriend lives. Police arrested Breitenbach on Thursday after an intensive investigation.

A statement left on the voicemail recording of an Eagle reporter from Beitenbach’s family said the family “is in utter shock and disbelief.”

“It is impossible to communicate the depth of our sorrow and the grief we feel for the victim and her family,” the statement said.

He is due back in court July 5.

A Savannah initiative for housing homeless folks should begin to take shape within two weeks on a Dundee Street plat adjacent to the Tiny House project, City Manager Pat Monahan said Friday, June 12.

Dundee Village will sit on about a three-acre site, first with 65 tents and later with 65 converted shipping containers in what Monahan said would be a pilot project for possible use at other sites in the city.

First proposed as an overflow site for homeless left out of existing shelters because of social distancing requirements spurred by COVID-19, the project now has expanded to a pilot.

“That left some 100 homeless on the streets,” Monahan said. “We needed to provide overflow shelters. … It’s a quick solution but it’s a long-term solution.”

It offers an alternative to homeless camps under bridges and other sites in the city and provides showers and other amenities, he said.

Monahan said there are about 3,000 circumstantial homeless in Savannah, or those who have lost jobs or homes for a brief time. An additional 1,000 are chronic homeless, with about a third of those living in camps.

The city is waiting for Georgia Power to provide electricity to the site before moving in the tents, which is hoped to be in about two weeks.

In addition, a 10-by-40-foot shipping container will be on the site in the same time frame to provide a community center and case worker, Monahan said.

The additional containers are expected to begin in about six months and eventually will replace the tents as more permanent structures.

“We’re experimenting with the containers,” he said, adding that they make a perfect building block.

The camp will be laid out to accommodate single men, single women and family sections.

The city is establishing a code of conduct for Dundee Village residents, including prohibiting drugs, alcohol and firearms as well as sex offenders. Eventually, support or wrap-around services will be in place, although that will not be a city function.

Those services will include behavioral health and medical as well as job training, Monahan said.

“The city is not doing the work, not getting into this business,” he said.

Monahan said the Georgia Ports Authority has provided suppliers’ names, and he hopes the containers will be donated. Local businesses can donate the units as well, he said.

The cost

Monahan said each container will cost $3,000 to $5,000 and can be built out for a total cost of about $10,000 a unit.

Those units will come in three sizes to accommodate single residents, couples and families, Monahan said.

Volunteers will be relied on to help flesh out the containers.

Monahan credited Alderwoman Linda Wilder-Bryan, who sought donations and got 200 tents, but they were small, one- or two-person shelters.

Amazon has agreed to trade those tents for bigger tents for as many as five people, he said.

Wilder-Bryan said the effort is a continuation of almost 39 years of work to assist “people who people want to forget.”

She said friend Andree’ Patterson, a community leader, sent her a news article on similar efforts in Tampa, Florida, to help the homeless. She went on Facebook to seek donations, including towels and socks.

“It just grew legs,” she said. “This will be the first time in Savannah that they will have an actual sanitary homeless site that offers lights and (security) camera, a washer and driers, toilets and showers.”

“This is my baby,” she said. “I’m excited about this.”

“They won’t look like containers,” Monahan added. He sought the input of Savannah architect Patrick Shay for design of the container homes.

“He volunteered to do it,” Monahan said. “He didn’t charge the city a dime for it.”

Shay, president of Gunn Meyerhoff Shay Architects, said that when Monahan approached him with the concept, he was “dubious.”

Architects in his office “ran a little bit of a contest in the office” and the results impressed, he said. Shay said the final package, on a smaller scale, will have some of the amenities of a small apartment.

“They are durable,” he added.

Alternative project

Monahan said the work can be done a lot quicker than the Tiny House project next door.

“We’ll have 65 tents up in a week,” he said.

Monahan said that while he supports the Tiny House project by the Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless, he thinks they have taken too long and been too expensive.

“I think it’s a better plan than the Tiny House project,” Monahan said. “It’s about economics and how quickly we can get it done.”

But the two projects will work in conjunction with each other, he said.

Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless Authority Executive Director Cindy Murphy Kelley announced this week that the authority is moving ahead with fundraising for phase 2 of the Tiny House project, called The Cove at Dundee, to house military veterans who are homeless.

That project houses 23 homeless in Phase 1 and another 23 in Phase 2.

Charges were part of Operation Broken Heart, a nationwide sting

A sex offender previously convicted in state courts has been has been sentenced to more than 20 years in federal prison after being captured in a nationwide sting while attempting to commit additional crimes against children.

Benjamin Ray, 40, of Honea Path, S.C., was sentenced to 258 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge William T. Moore Jr. after pleading guilty to Attempted Coercion and Enticement of a Minor to Engage in Sexual Activity for incidents that occurred in Chatham County, said Bobby L. Christine, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. In addition, Ray must serve 15 years of supervised release after completion of his prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.

“There will be no more opportunities for this criminal to prey on children,” said U.S. Attorney Christine. “Thanks to the outstanding effort of our law enforcement partners, his days of catch and release in the system of another state are over.”

According to information presented during his sentencing hearing, Ray has a more than 20-year history as a child predator, starting at age 17 when he was convicted of molesting an 8-year-old girl. After a brief prison term he was convicted at age 22 of molesting an 11-year-old girl. After release from custody, Ray repeatedly was convicted of failing to register as a sex offender.

Ray was arrested in 2019 as part of Operation Broken Heart, a nationwide operation conducted by the Internet Crimes Against Children task forces, after Ray held a vulgar online conversation with an undercover law enforcement officer whom Ray believed to be a child. During the subsequent investigation, officers found evidence that Ray was committing crimes with a real child and seeking 14-year-old victims.

“This criminal will be spending more than a year in jail for every year of his life that he has been molesting and preying on children,” said acting Special Agent in Charge Robert Hammer, who oversees Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) operations in Georgia and Alabama. “Unfortunately, even a 21-and-a-half-year sentence will not restore the innocence of all the children who have fallen victim to this predator.”

Operation Broken Heart led to the arrest of nearly 1,700 suspected online child sex offenders, including two in the Southern District of Georgia. The task forces identified 308 offenders who either produced child pornography or committed child sexual abuse, and identified 357 children who suffered recent, ongoing or historical sexual

During the course of the operation, the task forces investigated more than 18,500 complaints of technology-facilitated crimes targeting children and delivered more than 2,150 presentations on internet safety to over 201,000 youth and adults.

The other Southern District defendant in the operation, Steven Andrew Ross, 30, of Savannah, was sentenced in February to 120 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood after pleading guilty to Attempted Sex Trafficking of a Minor.

The ICAC Program is funded through the Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) within the Office of Justice Programs (OJP).

The cases in the Southern District of Georgia were investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the Savannah Police Department, in conjunction with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and prosecuted for the United States by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tania Groover.

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