A 13 year old girl is being commended for reporting an incident last week that led to the arrest of a convicted sex offender at the Smithville Municipal Swimming Pool.
“If this little girl hadn’t told me then there is no telling what would have happened,” said Jeania Poss, operator of the Pool in an interview with WJLE Monday.
41 year old Timothy Eugene Bowman of 1507 Big Hurricane Road is accused of making sexual comments to the 13 year old and two other teens. He is charged with three counts of solicitation of a person under 18 years of age and violation of the sexual offender registry law. He is under a $25,000 bond and will be in court on June 26.
According to Poss, the child came forward last Wednesday to report the incident which occurred the previous week and when Bowman showed up at the pool again, Poss immediately called police and refused to let him leave until officers arrived.
“The little girl had gone to my lifeguard (Wednesday, June 18) to tell him that there was a guy there the previous week that had made her feel uncomfortable. So my lifeguard came to me right away to tell me what had happened,” said Poss. “Me and the little girl talked about what was said. I told her that if she ever saw him there again to let me know. She had described him to me so I had an image of who he was. Just a couple of hours later, he pulled up in the parking lot. I saw him pull up. As I was going to find the little girl to see if that was the guy, she was coming to tell me that was the guy. I already had my lifeguards on alert so when he came inside the gate, we watched every move he made while I sent someone to call the police. We were watching this guy so closely that I think he caught onto us watching him so he went to get his stuff to leave and as he was walking out the gate, I took off running after him. I stopped him and told him he couldn’t go anywhere until the police got there. Of course he was denying everything. Within just a matter of minutes, the police were there and they questioned him. I told the police officer what the little girl had reported to me and the officer asked the guy to go get his ID. When the guy went to get his ID, the police officer called it in and that’s when it came back that this man was a registered sex offender. I didn’t know at the time that he was a sex offender. I just called the police because of the comments that she had said he made to her. That was the reason I called the police,” Poss said.
Police later learned that Bowman allegedly made sexual comments to two other girls, a 14 year old and a 16 year old in recent visits to the pool.
Operators of the pool want to reassure parents that every effort is made daily to keep everyone, including children safe. ” Keeping everybody safe is our top priority at the swimming pool. That’s what we’re there for is to keep the swimmers safe. We watch everything that goes on there. I don’t want anybody to be scared of coming out because once we knew about it (Bowman), we took care of it,” said Poss.
“I do want this to be an awareness. I do want everybody to teach their children to speak up. If somebody makes you feel uncomfortable, if you don’t want to tell your parents, tell an adult because if this little girl hadn’t told me then there is no telling what would have happened. I want this to be an awareness. It could happen at church. It could happen at the grocery store. Just teach your children not only the dangers of talking to strangers but that if they do talk to a stranger, if that stranger makes them feel uncomfortable to please report it,” Poss concluded.
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