A recent Gazette report is as chilling as a Netflix true-crime biopic. But the most troubling part for Colorado Springs residents is how our criminal justice system’s approach to plea deals and parole is partly to blame for the perpetrator’s alleged actions. Police say the Dec. 1 incident inv olved a man released seven months ago from state custody. Kendon Ray, 34, allegedly entered the restroom of a retail store on the Springs’ east side. There, he asked a boy to go into a bathroom stall with him. Frightened, the boy immediately left the restroom and told an adult, who chased Ray out of the store, according to police records. Interviews with store management and security footage allegedly corroborated the boy’s account. Ray’s face was identifiable in the video, police say. Later that day, Ray turned himself in before the incident was reported to police. He is a registered sex offender with a violent, compulsory criminal background of sexual misconduct and now is being held on $100,000 bond at the El Paso County jail facing a charge of “enticement of a child” — only a Class 4 felony with a penalty of as little as two years in prison. It turns out Ray’s criminal history includes a conviction for second-degree assault, using a deadly weapon to cause injury, in July 2009, as well as a December 2008 incident eerily similar to his current charges. In that incident, he followed a boy into a restroom at a movie theater and sexually assaulted him. But the sexual assault case was dismissed as part of a plea agreement on the other assault case, an affidavit stated. And that plea deal now has the effect of watering down the charges for which he’s currently in custody. That’s because the dismissal of the 2008 sexual assault case means he now only can face the Class 4 enticement charge. He could have faced a more serious Class 3 felony enticement charge this time if his record had included a previous enticement conviction. But the plea bargain had the effect of erasing that earlier charge. It gets even more galling. Ray’s surrender at the start of the month came nearly eight months to the day since Springs police received a phone call from a mental health official with the state Department of Corrections. The official warned local law enforcement Ray was soon to be released from prison and was “one of the most concerning cases” she had seen in a while, according to arrest records. While incarcerated, Ray showed a sexual predilection for young children and seemed “determined that he will re-offend,” the official had said. As reported by The Gazette, Ray also self-identified as a Satanist and professed “I’m into kids; it’s part of me.” Ray was released to the Springs Rescue Mission and wasn’t supervised. It is reminiscent of another case three years ago when 27-year-old Allison Scarfone was raped, killed and left in a garage in Colorado Springs while the perpetrator, convicted violent sex offender Gregory Whittemore, 39, was out on parole despite several parole violations. In Whittemore’s case, his parole officers had been blocked by a 2019 law from sending him back to prison. Which meant that, as in the current case, a known, dangerous sexual predator was free to roam the streets. In Ray’s case, if a mental health professional felt the need to warn police in advance of his release, why wasn’t he still behind bars? And why was so serious a crime as his earlier enticement of a child ever on the table for a plea bargain in the first place? ...read more read less