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Registered Sex Offenders Fall Victim to “Vigilante Justice”

According to prosecutors, an Anchorage man assaulted and robbed three men on Alaska’s sex offender registry, keeping a notebook that listed the names of his victims and the items he stole from them. Jason Christian Vukovich, 41, allegedly plotted the attacks as revenge for his victims’ “past crimes,” and carried out the assaults over a five-day period between June 25 and 29, 2016.

One of sex offenders he targeted, Wesley Demarest, who served time after pleading no contest to sexual abuse of a minor, said Vukovich called him by name and said “I’m an avenging angel. I’m going to mete out justice for the people you hurt,” before fracturing his skull with a hammer. Two other victims, sex offenders Charles Albee and Andres Barbosa, recounted that their assailant, a man with “shoulder-length hair and a black leather jacket,” told them he found them on the state’s sex offender registry. Vukovich was charged with three class A felonies, four class B felonies and 11 class C felonies. A judge set his bail at $100,000.

Attacks against sex offenders are not uncommon. In 2012, a Washington man was sentenced to life without parole for gunning down two registered sex offenders. Patrick Drum, who pleaded guilty to the murders, was unrepentant at his sentencing hearing and admitted he had planned to continue killing sex offenders until he was caught. [See: PLN, Feb. 2013, p.50]. In Maryland, Donald Robinson died in 2014 after a young woman, Latiqwa Mayes, incited a crowd to violence by shouting that he was a sex offender who had raped her. Strangers joined in the beating, which mortally wounded Robinson. Mayes is now serving a six-year prison term; her father, Willie Mayes, who had initially detained Robinson, received a 10-year sentence suspended to two years. [See: PLN, June 2015, p.63].

Sources: www.ktva.com, www.baltimoresun.com, www.nydailynews.com

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