WATCH ABOVE: Utah police arrested a registered sex offender driving a school bus and attempting to pick up children on Monday. Dan Rascon reports.
TORONTO – Parents in a small town southeast of Salt Lake City are probably hugging their children extra tight days after a registered sex offender was caught driving a stolen school bus allegedly searching for victims.
Police claim that Patrick James Fredricksen, 30, was on parole when he walked away from a new job installing sod and stole a vehicle from a funeral home. From there, he eventually accessed a school bus that contained a list of children’s names and addresses.
“It could have been bad,” Emery County Sheriff’s Office representative Lt. Gayle Jensen told KUTV. “I fear just like any other parent the worst would happen.”
Fredricksen attempted to pick a young girl up at her home in Cleveland, police said in a statement, before asking for help in locating another child.
A woman eventually alerted authorities to a suspiciously slow school bus.
“A lieutenant from Emery County Sheriff’s Office located the slow moving bus and pulled in front of it before it had a chance to gain any speed,” the release added.
The suspect already has a dangerous past. He pleaded guilty in 2004 to third-degree unlawful sexual activity with a minor, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. The former volunteer firefighter also stole a badge and posed as a firefighter multiple times in 2006.
Fredricken currently sits in the Emery County Jail facing attempted child kidnapping charges, two counts of vehicle theft and other charges related to a water pipe he broke in his jail cell.
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