ST. GEORGE — After alleged attempts to lure two children away from their jewelry stand last week, a man who served prison time for a 2002 kidnapping case is back in jail, an arrest that stemmed from the efforts of the girls’ parents who helped identify the suspect.
On Monday morning, officers responded to a residence near the Washington Fields area in St. George to follow up on an incident reported three days earlier involving a suspicious interaction between two children and the suspect, 42-year-old Andrew James Gwilliam, according to charging documents filed in 5th District Court.
According to the report, the interaction happened shortly after 4 p.m. on Friday, when a middle-aged man approached two children under the age of 10 selling jewelry on the corner of the street in the Little Valley area. The man reportedly purchased several items and then asked the girls to go with him to clean a church.
Both told the suspect “no” and then ran to one of the girl’s homes to tell the parents, the report states.
Police say witnesses reported seeing the suspect driving a red SUV or possibly a larger vehicle, but a canvass of the area in search of the suspect’s vehicle turned up nothing.
The incident on Friday was not the first time Gwilliam approached the girls. According to the report, Gwilliam had shown up at the girls’ jewelry stand a day or two prior and asked them if they could help him clean a church. The girls said they would have to ask and then ran home and told their parents who then called and reported the incident to police, the report states.
The day after Friday’s incident, the reporting party reached out to authorities again and reportedly said Gwilliam had returned to the area, and when the caller saw the suspect driving through the neighborhood, they snapped a photo of the red vehicle and the license plate and sent these photos to police. Officers determined that the vehicle in the photos was the same type of vehicle that Gwilliam was known to drive.
The information and evidence collected reportedly led detectives to identify Gwilliam as the man suspected of attempting to lure the two young girls.
During a criminal history check, Gwilliam was found to be a registered sex offender in Utah following a 2002 case filed in Salt Lake County wherein the suspect pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree felony aggravated kidnapping and attempted forcible sex abuse. The following year, Gwilliam was sentenced to serve not less than 10 years in Utah State Prison. He was released in 2012, after serving less than nine years of his sentence.
According to KSL News, the 2002 case involved the kidnapping of young girls, one of which was a 12-year-old, from the Sandy area.
The sex offender registry also revealed a current address for the suspect listed on South Woodsview Circle in St. George, which is approximately 9 miles from the location where the incident reportedly took place.
Following the incident on Friday, officers met with Gwilliam who reportedly denied having any involvement in the incident.
Three days later on Monday morning, the suspect was arrested by Adult Probation and Parole Agents for a parole violation.
The St. George Police Department issued a statement Monday evening outlining the details of the incident, and also recommended that parents speak to their children about “stranger danger,” as well as steps they can take to stay safe – particularly with Halloween just around the corner.
Based on the witness statements and evidence collected from the incident reported in St George, investigators went to the jail where the suspect was being held on the parole violation to advise Gwilliam of the two misdemeanor counts of a sex offender enticing a child to accompany charges that were submitted to the county attorney’s office for review.
While meeting with officers, Gwilliam “said nothing,” the officer noted, and then requested the suspect be held without bail for posing “a significant risk to some of the most vulnerable people in society.”
Under Utah law, however, a defendant cannot be held without bail on a misdemeanor and bail was set in the case at $10,000. The charges are under review at the Washington County Attorney’s Office and the suspect remains in custody on the bail amount, as well as on the 72-hour parole hold.
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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