ST. GEORGE — A man accused of luring girls to his vehicle and exposing himself has been arrested.
On Monday evening, officers were dispatched to a club located on North 640 East in St. George on a report of a man acting inappropriately, according to a probable cause statement filed in support of the arrest.
Officers spoke to a witness at the scene who reportedly said a man she didn’t know pulled up next to her in a white pickup truck as she was heading into the club. The man said something to her but spoke so softly that she had to step closer to hear him.
As she did so, the man inquired about the club, asking what the place was for, and it was when she turned to face him that she realized he “was completely naked inside of his vehicle” and was “exposing his genitals without attempting to cover them,” the report states. After she asked him to put some clothes on, the man drove away.
Officers obtained a partial license plate number for the vehicle, described as a smaller white pickup truck. After running the plate through emergency dispatch, investigators say they discovered the number was transposed. When a registration check was run on the correct plate number, it came back indicating the plate belonged to a white Nissan Frontier registered to 33-year-old Shawn Truman.
Police say a driver’s license photo of the registered owner matched the description provided by the 911 caller from the club. The officer also noted the suspect’s behavior appeared to be part of a pattern based on the number of reports recently called into law enforcement.
One such report was called in 10 days before. On Aug. 2, Washington County Sheriff’s Office deputies were dispatched to a youth treatment center near New Harmony on a suspicious person report.
According to charging documents filed with the court, deputies spoke to witnesses who reported that a man driving a silver Kia had stopped and asked three females, two of whom were minors, for directions. As they approached the vehicle, they realized the man was completely nude.
The deputy notes the man “made no attempts to cover himself or apologize” for his lack of clothing. Instead, the man continued asking for directions.
One of the witnesses took a photo of the suspect’s license plate before he could get away, and they provided a detailed description of the suspect while speaking to deputies.
In the meantime, officers working the St. George case responded to Truman’s residence on Diagonal Street but did not find him at home or see the pickup truck parked anywhere in the area. When investigators called Truman, they inquired about several reports involving nudity, but he reportedly declined to speak to officers without an attorney present.
A check of Truman’s criminal history revealed a similar incident that took place on Sunday involving a bystander who reported that Truman was walking around nude outside of his residence, blocked only by a chain-link fence that was ineffective in concealing his nudity from others in the neighborhood, the officer wrote.
When investigators learned of the incident near the adolescent home in Washington County involving a suspect with “a similar motive” of speaking quietly to lure females to his vehicle, they reached out to deputies working the New Harmony case. A photo lineup later identified Truman as the individual reportedly involved in both cases.
Late Monday night, Truman was arrested and booked into jail in Washington County on four counts of lewdness. The Washington County Attorney’s Office filed formal charges on Tuesday. Truman was scheduled to appear in 5th District Court in St. George on Wednesday.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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