LEE COUNTY, Fla. - Sex offenders under the radar; more sex offenders are going off the grid with law enforcement by choosing not to register their latest address.
When we first started digging into this a few months ago there were only a couple of sex offenders in Lee County listed as "absconded".
That essentially means they're on the run from law enforcement. But now that number is way up, making it tougher to find them.
And that can make it nearly impossible for law enforcement to track them. And if they can't keep track of them, how can you?
The number of offenders unaccounted for has skyrocketed from just a couple to twelve and all were last known to live in Lee County. That means these offenders failed to register their address and now law enforcement doesn't know where they are.
Natasha Lafosse tells us, "That's scary, I have kids."
Most of the offenders’ victims were children, younger than 16 years old.
Margarito Sanchez was 36 when he was registered as a sex offender. James Cromwell moved here after sexually assaulting a child in Texas. Daniel Foley was 54 when he was caught with child pornography.
We tried to track down one offender who was recently arrested, Richard Deleon. Deleon’s last known address was at a home on Glenn Drive in Central Fort Myers.
His neighbors say he moved out about 6 months ago. One man we spoke with shouted profanities at us, demanding we not videotape him.
People who live on this street may have a reason not to want to talk to the media. They have a reason to be scared. There have been multiple shootings happening on their street.
Less than a block away is Club Blu, where recently more than a dozen were gunned down, 2 of them were killed.
Natasha remembers the shootings,: "Boom, boom, boom, and then they go there and this way and keep shooting."
Since the Club Blu shootings, Natasha never lets her kids out of her sight. "I don't let them go out, they just play on the ground and then after that we all go inside and don't go up and down (the street). It's scary here's it's scary."
In Collier County we found there are nine sex offenders listed as "absconded".
In Charlotte County there's only one.
