Sex-offender registry showed a Bellingham child kidnapper was set free. What happened?
An outdated web page at the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office caused concern briefly this week when it incorrectly showed that a convicted sex offender had been freed in Bellingham.
Jake Unick is in custody at the McNeil Island Special Commitment Center near Tacoma, a Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman told The Bellingham Herald on Wednesday — just as a Whatcom County judge ordered in September.
A subscriber to a sex-offender registry email list noticed this week that Unick was listed as living in the 2400 block of Ontario Street, in the Alabama Hill neighborhood.
Unick was supposed to be at the McNeil Island Special Commitment Center, after Judge Robert Olson ordered him held until a June trial that could result in an indefinite civil commitment.
Washington was the first state to allow such involuntary civil commitments of sex offenders who have served their criminal sentences, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld their constitutionality. Lawyers for the state Attorney General’s Office argued in favor of keeping Unick locked up.
Unick, 38, spent 10 years in prison for trying to grab two girls and one woman off the street and taking a 2-year-old girl from the Fred Meyer grocery store on West Bakerview Road in 2013.
“Mr. Unick was in fact transported to McNeil Island on Sept. 11. I obtained the information directly from the jail. I’m not sure why he’s listed on the Sheriff’s Sex Offender Registry,” Whatcom County Prosecutor Eric RIchey told The Bellingham Herald.
As it turns out, the information on sheriff’s office website was wrong, and it has been updated, Richey said an email.
