Dennis R. Walker Jr. of East Hampton has been charged with a felony for allegedly failing to register as a sex offender, his second such offense since a sexual abuse conviction in 2008.
Mr. Walker, 47, was arrested Friday morning at the Lobster Roll (“Lunch”) on Napeague after East Hampton Town police learned that he was no longer living on Front Street in Springs, the last address he registered with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. He had not been living there since about Feb. 27, police said. Under the state’s Sex Offender Registration Act, he must notify the state within 10 days of changing his address.
According to a statement from someone whom police did not identify, Mr. Walker had been in Tucson, Ariz., visiting family, from February to late April. Once he was back in East Hampton, he stayed with friends and a relative in a tent at Cedar Point County Park in Northwest Woods until May 12, and then at a campsite at Hither Hills State Park in Montauk, where he slept in a sleeping bag on the beach. He had reportedly been thrown out of a family house on Front Street and had nowhere else to go.
He admitted to police that he had not followed the registry rules, saying, “I had a brain fart. I am sorry. I am not a bad guy,” according to court records.
Mr. Walker was previously convicted of violating sex offender requirements on Aug. 11, 2011, and was sentenced to one year in jail. His presence on the sex offender registry stems from a guilty plea on March 14, 2008, to sexual abuse in the first degree, having had sexual contact with a child under 11 years old.
With Reporting by Doug Kuntz