Rapist who cut off GPS tracker in Puyallup is charged 3rd time with trying to escape
For the third time, a rapist who cut off his GPS tracker is charged after trying to avoid or escape supervision.
Ronald Clayton, 41, was most recently released from prison Oct. 5.
Corrections officers left him at the Tacoma Rescue Mission, where Clayton claimed he planned to stay, and ordered him to report to the Tacoma Community Justice Center by Oct. 7.
He never showed up.
Authorities checked his GPS monitor and saw he’d cut it off at 9:44 a.m. that morning, 15 minutes before he was supposed to register as a sex offender.
The GPS tracker was found the following day in a garbage bin on River Walk Trail in Puyallup.
After five days, Clayton was found in Enumclaw and taken into custody.
He is currently jailed in King County, where he is awaiting trial on an open drug case.
Pierce County prosecutors have charged him with escape from community custody and third-degree malicious mischief. No arraignment date has been set.
Clayton was convicted in August 2016 of failure to register as a sex offender in Kitsap County and sentenced to a year of community supervision. He was also convicted in December 2017 in Kitsap County for failing to register as a sex offender and sentenced to 36 months of community supervision.
He was labeled a level III offender -the level reserved for offenders most likely to re-offend - after a 1995 conviction of assault and rape after forcing his way into a stranger’s home at gunpoint, tying the woman up and sexually assaulting her. He choked her with a cord before the victim agreed to leave with him, then fled to a neighbor’s house for help.
This story was originally published November 25, 2019 at 10:39 AM.
