LINCOLN, Neb. – A clerk listed as a suspect in a child sex assault shot himself in the back room of a store after giving a police officer the store surveillance tape that may have shown the assault.
Lincoln police say Glen Sutton, 53, of Bennet was not under arrest and had not yet been contacted as a suspect.
Sutton is listed on the Nebraska State Patrol Sex Offender Registry as a Level 3 offender — one of the offenders judged by authorities as most likely to reoffend. He had been convicted in 1993 of two counts of first-degree sexual assault in Dodge County.
On Monday, Lincoln police spokeswoman Katherine Finnell gave this account of what happened Saturday at a convenience store in northwest Lincoln:
A 10-year-old boy told his mother about being molested Saturday afternoon at the store. She contacted the police, and an investigator was assigned the case.
Another officer who went to the store had been a state corrections officer. He recognized Sutton and knew he was a registered sex offender.
So the officer made some small talk and asked Sutton for the surveillance tape of that day. Sutton went in back, got the tape and brought it out to the officer.
After the officer went outside to call the investigative officer, Sutton went in the back and shot himself.
A friend of Sutton who was in the store didn't hear the gunshot, but when he went to find his friend to help a customer at the counter, the friend found Sutton's body.
An incident report filed Saturday night before the suicide listed Sutton as a "PR" — person responsible. The boy had told the investigator that Sutton had molested him, but Finnell said the investigator had not yet told the officer at the store that Sutton was the primary suspect.
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