Tampa, Florida - Sex offender answers door naked, arrested
Tampa, Florida – If the red flags were going to go up, this was the time. Thursday night, Tampa Police were conducting a random sex offender check and knocked on 52-year-old Raymond Gomez’s door. When he answered, he was naked. “He kind of stood behind [the door], and his eyes were as big as saucers,” Ofr. Felicia Pecora recalled. “I just thought, he looked like people look when they just get out… when they’re naked and you catch them… So, I said, ‘Are you naked?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Well, put your pants on because we’re going to do a check on you.’” Gomez did and then let the two officers inside. But as he was talking to them, another red flag went up. Ofr. Pecora noticed he was pacing deliberately in front of the bedroom door. “That’s when I kinda stepped in the bedroom. And as I walked past the door, I saw a young girl in the bed like this,” Ofr. Pecora said as she made a motion showing a stiff body, “with her hand kinda hidden, and I said, ‘Who are you?’”
The girl first told officers she was 18, but she is 15. She said she’d met Gomez about seven months ago through a Christian chat room online. But neither of them were using their computers to access the internet. They were using cell phones. “A lot of times parents don’t realize kids can get access to the internet through their cell phone. What she said was a 50-cent chat session, and that’s how they met,” Ofr. Pecora said.
Since then, the two had talked on the phone about God and religion. Eventually, Gomez visited the girl at her house in Bartow when her parents weren’t home. Since then, police say the two had had sex about 20 times at various locations, including Gomez’s home Thursday night.
The girl told officers, earlier in the day, Gomez had driven to her house in Bartow to pick her up. Gomez was arrested Thursday night for violating the conditions of his parole, which include staying at least 1,000 feet from a child, not using the internet and keeping a driving log. Gomez has been a registered sex offender since 2002, when he was charged with having sex with a child under the age of 16 in Hillsborough county.
Detectives think there is at least one more victim. If you have any information, contact Tampa Police.