Morgan Hill
– A convicted sex offender who was seen on a Morgan Hill school
campus was arrested Wednesday morning by Morgan Hill police and
booked into Santa Clara County Jail, Morgan Hill Police Cmdr. David
Swing said.
Morgan Hill – A convicted sex offender who was seen on a Morgan Hill school campus was arrested Wednesday morning by Morgan Hill police and booked into Santa Clara County Jail, Morgan Hill Police Cmdr. David Swing said.
Daniel Duran, 41, was at his residence in San Jose when MHPD Detective Kevin Beilmann and officer David Ray, along with San Jose police officers, picked him up for being on a school grounds. A law passed last year makes it illegal for a registered sex offender to go onto a school campus.
He was convicted of forcible rape in 1988 and assault with intent to commit rape in 1999.
Duran was spotted March 21 on the Nordstrom Elementary School campus in Morgan Hill by a maintenance worker about 8:15pm. The school district employee recognized Duran’s picture accompanied by a story that ran in the March 30 Morgan Hill Times. He called the paper, and a reporter at paper passed the information on to Beilmann.
“We would not have been able to arrest this guy without the complete cooperation of several groups including the media, Pleasanton PD and the community at large,” Swing said. “This is one of the finest examples of community involvement I have seen. This is a perfect example of what happens when we work together. If you take one piece out of that puzzle, you don’t have the results we saw today.”
Duran was seen in Gilroy in December, talking to a female homeowner. Two weeks later, he was back in the neighborhood, talking to a male homeowner.
The man looked him up on the Megan’s Law Web site and discovered Duran is a registered sex offender. The week of March 19, Duran was spotted several times in front of homes that are for sale and real estate offices in Morgan Hill. About the same time, Pleasanton Police Department issued a press release with similar concerns about Duran.
Officers contacted Duran to tell him his behavior was making people uncomfortable, Swing said, but he pointed out that it is not illegal to go to open houses. Beilmann said Friday that officers could not arrest him for sitting in his vehicle in the street at homes for sale.
Beilmann requested a warrant for Duran’s arrest after hearing that Duran was on the Nordstrom campus.
Wednesday morning, Beilmann, Ray and San Jose police arrested Duran at his home without incident, and he was booked into jail on $6,000 bail.
Duran told officers he was employed by the Photo-Find Missing Children’s Center in San Jose since July, passing out fliers of missing children. Representatives from Photo-Find were not available to comment by press time Wednesday.
