By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A judge set bail at $250,000 yesterday for a Centralia man accused of sneaking into a neighbor woman’s house while she slept.
Centralia police reported yesterday a woman sleeping with her child woke up about 1 a.m. on Thursday to find a stranger sitting on her bed holding women’s lingerie.
A registered sex offender who lives a block from her on North Pearl Street was arrested later that day at his home.
Michael A. Sanders, 42, has been felony-free for five years and lived at the same address for the past six or seven months, defense attorney Bob Schroeter told the judge yesterday afternoon in Lewis County Superior Court as bail was contemplated.
Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes said Sanders became a registered sex offender following a conviction for voyeurism in the year 2000 in Okanogan County.
Hayes said Sanders was convicted of felony harassment in 2003, failing to register as a sex offender four times and for fourth-degree assault, domestic violence in 2005. He also pleaded guilty last month in Chehalis Municipal Court to telephone harassment, for making phone calls of a sexual nature, Hayes told the judge.
Judge James Lawler agreed with Hayes’ concerns about “escalating behavior,” given the allegation the suspect was in the victim’s bedroom, when he decided on the bail amount.
Sanders was charged yesterday with voyeurism and residential burglary with a sexual motivation.
Charging documents in his case give the following account, which is somewhat different than Centralia police reported yesterday.
The woman was asleep with her child and when she woke up, a man sitting on her bed reached toward her head with one hand while holding her lingerie (top and panties) in the other hand.
She grabbed her child, stood up and walked toward the front door, telling the man to follow her.
They exchanged a few words and she closed the door after the man walked outside and then she called her aunt and then 911.
As she escorted him outside, the man looked confused and said, “I was bringing you a pack of cigarettes.”
The woman had asked him how he got inside and he said, “I came in because I heard you say come in.”
Police said they think he came in a window. She told police she had seen the man earlier in the evening sitting at her neighbor’s porch and had given him a couple cigarettes.
Officers initially suspected another man, her neighbor’s son, and the woman identified a picture of that man as the man who came into her house.
Later Thursday, Officer Gary Byrnes showed the woman two photo montages: one with the neighbor’s son and another with Sanders. She pointed out Sanders and said she didn’t know how she could have gotten them mixed up.
Byrnes went to Sanders home, was invited into the kitchen, and arrested him.
Sanders remains in the Lewis County Jail.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter