How Did a Hopkins Predatory Offender Go Missing?

When news broke that from Hopkins, many residents questioned how that could happen.

The charging document filed against 37-year-old Pedro Chavez Jumping Eagle, who is still missing, states that he registered his Hopkins address in April 2011. But when Hopkins police went there July 18, he was nowhere to be found. What happened during that period?

Jumping Eagle was a Level I predatory offender, said Doug Neville, a Department of Public Safety spokesman. That designation classified Jumping Eagle as a low risk for re-offense.

Hopkins has many more of these lower-risk offenders than those like the Level III offender when police . While the community has just one Level III offender, 25-year-old Kenneth Edward Dean, it had a total of 47 registered predatory offenders at the time of last month’s community notification meeting.

These offenders aren’t as well known because . Where departments usually host information meetings when Level III offenders move in, information on Level I offenders is usually only shared with other law enforcement agencies, victims or witnesses and adult members of the offender’s immediate household.

Level I offenders also receive less oversight. Monitoring them is a collaboration between the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and local law enforcement, Neville said.

The BCA typically sends annual compliance letters to these offenders verifying that they’re at the address they claim. If the offenders don’t respond, BCA notifies local law enforcement. Officers then go to the address to check in person.

That’s what happened in Jumping Eagle’s case. He didn’t answer the letter. BCA asked officers to do a status check. When he wasn’t there, he was deemed out of compliance and subject to accountability by state law—including the felony failure to register charge filed against him Friday.

Jumping Eagle also differs from Dean in another way. Dean is on intensive supervised release—which will involve regular checks from his supervising agent, drug and alcohol testing and GPS tracking for the first several months. The head of Hennepin County’s intensive supervised release program compared the first eight-months phase to house arrest—and added that Dean will only get a bit more freedom in the second phase.

By contrast, Jumping Eagle, who was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct in 1993, was released from probation in 2009, according to the Department of Corrections.

Follow us on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Sign up for our free daily newsletter