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SANDY -- Police have arrested a registered sex offender they believe raped a 4-year-old girl at a Deseret Industries store in Sandy.
Detectives are now looking into how long he was in the store before taking and sexually assaulting the little girl and whether he could have possibly hurt anyone else.
"This girl was only away from her mother for a very short time." Sgt. Troy Arnold
Sandy police Sgt. Troy Arnold says the girl was shopping with her mom around 1:30 Tuesday afternoon at the DI near 700 East and 9400 South. She asked if she could go look at the toys nearby.
"This girl was only away from her mother for a very short time," Arnold told KSL Newsradio.
When the mother looked for her child, the girl was nowhere in sight. Frantically, the woman started searching for her child in the store, asking for the help of workers.
"The mom then started searching the female's and male's restrooms, and when she opened the male's restroom, she discovered her daughter with the suspect," Arnold said.
Police say 41-year-old Richard Chad Randall ran as the mother screamed. Customers chased after him, out of the store and into the parking lot, where they tackled him and waited for police.
The customers held Randall on the ground until officers arrived. He was then arrested for aggravated kidnapping, rape of a child and aggravated sexual abuse of a child.
"They are very serious charges," Arnold said. "Short of actually killing someone, they're as serious as they can get. If he's convicted of these charges, he could be looking at serious prison time."
Suspect completed treatment as a sex offenderRandall is a registered sex offender. In 1999 he was convicted of a misdemeanor for attempted sexual abuse of a child and was ordered to undergo treatment. According to Adult Probation and Parole he was sentenced to 90 days in jail, then ordered to complete outside counseling. He successfully completed his probation in 2002 and since then he has apparently been compliant with the sex offender registry.
Jerry Buie, a therapist with Pride Counseling who treats sex offenders, says he wouldn't be surprised if there are more victims.
He says when sex offenders are on probation, they are monitored very closely -- but Randall was not on probation Tuesday.
Other than being on the sex offender registry, Buie, a licensed clinical social worker, says there were no safeguards in place to keep Randall from re-offending.
"He didn't exercise or use the things that he was disciplined to use, and now there's a little girl who's been victimized," Buie said. "You want to see people perform at their best, and clearly this individual gave up on the skills that he was taught in therapy."
Buie did not treat Randall, but says Randall likely spent at least a year in treatment. Typically, sex offenders spend 18 months to two years in a program. About a quarter of them re-offend, he says.
"It's like working with an alcoholic," Buie explains. "Does an alcoholic ever get cured? No, but an alcoholic can learn life management skills, can learn how to manage and control their alcoholism in such a way that they live their life sober and clean."
Randall is being charged with the maximum the law allows. Buie says prison time could make a difference.
"There is a therapeutic role to incarceration," he said. "Offenders who are incarcerated tend to do much better in treatment."
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Story compiled with contributions from Sandra Yi, Andrew Adams, Shara Park and Sarah Dallof.
