SEATTLE — Officials are investigating how a man convicted of assaulting a woman was able to cut off his GPS monitor and escape from a restrictive housing complex in Washington state, prompting a multistate search until he was captured Thursday.
Damion Blevins, 33, was arrested outside a Portland, Oregon, convenience store after a three-day search and will be extradited back to Washington, the Seattle Times reported.
Blevins was convicted in 2017 of second-degree assault on a woman and was deemed a “sexually violent predator,” according to the newspaper. He was civilly committed to a barbed wire-ensconced treatment facility on McNeil Island, about 14 miles (22.5 kilometers) southwest of Tacoma, Washington. He had recently been granted court permission to live in less restrictive conditions in a Tukwila neighborhood.
The Department of Corrections and the Department of Social and Health Services will investigate what went wrong.