Sex Offender Charged in Murder Lived Far Enough from Walls, St. Patrick Schools

When Kent resident Leonard Armstrong was , his Sherman Street housemates were surprised to learn they had been living with a registered sex offender.

Armstrong moved late last year into Apt. 2 at 112 Sherman St., a large home built in 1890 and now divided into nearly a dozen rooming house units. While fellow residents said they had many conversations with Armstrong regarding his past, his sex offender status never came up.

One of the rooming house residents was upset that he had his young daughter at the house for a visit the previous week. “I wouldn’t have brought her over if I knew,” he said.

Armstrong's Sherman Street rooming house is located just over a half-mile away from both and . That residence was permissible according to Ohio law, which requires that offenders live more than 1,000 feet away from schools, preschools or daycare centers.

Want to know if a registered sex offender is living in your neighborhood? The state attorney general’s office makes it easy to find out on the Internet.

The online Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification (eSORN) program allows users to perform a variety of searches using a specific address or geographic region to locate the homes of sex offenders. The whereabouts of a known offender also can be tracked by name.

Searches return interactive maps that link users to “files” about nearby offenders.

Those files provide details such as the offender’s address, name, alias, detailed physical description, photo, nature of conviction and level of the offense.

The website also makes it simple to register for free, confidential email alerts whenever a sex offender moves within a one-mile radius. Multiple addresses – such as home, school and the babysitter’s house – can be entered to generate multiple alerts.

The eSORN database is linked to all 88 county sheriff’s departments in Ohio and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. Rachel Spence, eSORN officer for the Portage County Sheriff’s Office, said she updates the website’s information for Portage on a daily basis.

There are 197 registered sex offenders living in Portage County today, and nearly 40 of them call Kent home. Those numbers are small in comparison to nearby counties.

“If you want to be safe, Portage County is a good place to live,” Spence said. “For example, Cuyahoga County has 2,892 offenders as of today. Summit County has 928. Trumbull has 259.”

There are three levels of risk classifications for sexual offenders, all of which require offenders to register their address with the sheriff’s office for varying numbers of years. Failure to register and keep information updated is a felony. Spence said the offender registration compliance rate in Portage is “excellent.”

Federal law requires Spence to mail notification postcards to all those living within a 1,000-foot radius only when an offender classified as high-risk moves into a neighborhood.

That’s why state and local officials encourage use of the email alert system, as it generates notices no matter what level of offense a new neighbor committed.

“We can’t do (U.S. mail) notifications on someone who’s not in a public-notification classification. That’s why we have the website,” Spence said. “The information is out there. If (people) want to know, they need to make it their business to find out.”

As for Armstrong, Spence said that when he moved to Ohio from New Jersey in 2008 he had nearly fulfilled his 10-year address registration requirement as a sexual offender. But with differences in state laws and ever-evolving federal laws, Armstrong had to “start over” when he moved to Ohio.

“He’s one of the (offenders) that’s in limbo because of the law change … He sees me once a year until they come up with a ruling for the out-of-state offenders,” Spence said.

Armstrong had been labeled in the lowest-risk category for a sexual offense that involved an adult female in New Jersey. Spence said she had no other details about his case.

on a $1 million bond for the June 6 stabbing death of Jeffrey A. Sipes. A preliminary hearing in Armstrong's case is set for at 11:15 a.m. Friday in Kent Municipal Court.

Use this link to search for offenders through the attorney general's website. Use this link to search for offenders through the county sheriff's website. Register for email alerts on either website. Spence said those without computer access can visit the sheriff's office to receive a printout regarding their neighborhood.