The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

A 70-year-old man wanted for more than a dozen sexual offences in Florida was arrested in Exuma Saturday night, after being on the run for almost a year.

According to reports, around 7:50pm Saturday, officers from the Drug Enforcement Unit, assisted by officers in Exuma, acting on intelligence, arrested 70-year-old Loomes Wheeler of Kissimmee, Florida in George Town.

Wheeler is wanted for nine counts of capital sexual battery, four counts of lewd and lascivious conduct, and three counts of sexual performance by a child.

He is presently in police custody for breach of the Immigration Act pending deportation to the United States.

According to international reports, Wheeler, the owner of Horse World, was arrested April 16, 2013 and charged with 14 sexual offences.

Investigators say, a nine-year-old relative told them she had been battered by Wheeler a number of times from the time she was five years old.

The girl told investigators that the alleged encounters happened at Wheeler’s home and at his place of business, Horse World Riding Stables in Kissimmee.

On April 25, Wheeler was arrested again after a 20-year-old woman relative told authorities that Wheeler touched her inappropriately when she was seven or eight years old.

According to investigators, the woman told them the last incident she could remember with Wheeler was when she was 16.

Wheeler was then charged with three counts of lewd or lascivious molestation.

Court Resources officials said Wheeler had two monitoring bracelets because the signal was weak in the area where he resides. One is for inside the home, and the other for outside the home, but still on the property.

Wheeler was last seen at his home in September 2013. When officers searched his property, after receiving a call from the monitoring system for Wheeler’s ankle monitor, one of Wheeler’s GPS ankle monitors was found in a wooded area near his home, and the other was found on the driveway of his home.

Investigations continue.