URBANA, Ill. (AP) — Police in Urbana say they’ve arrested a registered child sex offender after officers found him with five children in his vehicle at a park.
The (Champaign) News-Gazette reports that 55-year-old Duane Eric Edwards of Champaign was charged Monday with being a sex offender in a prohibited zone. Urbana police say an officer found the children in the vehicle after pulling over Edwards Sunday afternoon. The children all were between the ages of 2 and 7. All of them were from Mattoon.
Police arrested Edwards, notified the children’s mothers and called the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Edwards was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual assault of a 3-year-old child in Jefferson County in 1989.