Superior Court marshals on Thursday arrested 36-year-old Daniel Cove, a registered sex offender, on a warrant charging him with failing to comply with registration requirements, according to a news release from Attorney General Denise George.
Cove was arrested at the Village Rehabilitation Center in Sion Hill on St. Croix.
He had been convicted on June 23, 2002, of indecent assault and battery on a child younger than 14 in Massachusetts and sentenced to prison. After his release in 2013 he moved to the Virgin Islands and registered as a Tier 2 sex offender. As such, he was required to register every six months for 25 years. In 2016 Cove was arrested on St. Croix for failing to update his sex offender registration. His last known verification date that listed an address for him was Aug. 28, 2018.
Cove’s location was unknown and investigators from the V.I. Department of Justice were actively searching for him.
A team of agents from the VIDOJ, with the assistance of other local and federal agencies, routinely conduct unannounced inspections of registered sexual offenders for the purpose of verifying their locations and other personal information, such as their work and home addresses.
The attorney general and VIDOJ is mandated to administer and enforce the sex offender registration laws. Within three business days of arriving at a new location, a registered sexual offender must notify the VIDOJ of his/her name, residence, temporary lodging information, vehicle information, Internet identifiers, telephone numbers, school information and employment status.
Registered sexual offenders in the territory are prosecuted by the attorney general for either failing to register or not keeping their registration current, as required by law. If convicted, the penalty is a fine of no less than $3,000 nor more than $5,000, or imprisonment for no less than three months nor more than two years, or both. The law also provides that it is an offense to assist a sex offender to evade the registration requirements, which carries a fine of no less than $1,000 nor more than $2,000, or imprisonment for no more than six months, or both.
Superior Court marshals were notified of Cove’s location and apprehended him.
