Tybee residents remain worried about missing sex offender

Penn Myrick has lived on Tybee Island for more than 12 years.  He and his wife own an ice cream shop and he says his teenage daughters and his friends work there.  "We often leave them alone in the store," he tells me.

Because of that it didn't take much time to strike up a conversation with Myrick Thursday about a missing sex offender whose ankle bracelet was found outside a Tybee convenience store sometime Monday morning.  "Nobody knows where the man is and everybody should be on guard," Myrick says.

40 year old Stephen Alexander Bell, considered a "dangerous predator" by the state of Georgia has been missing since Monday morning when he apparently cut off an electronic ankle bracelet he had been ordered to wear.  The bracelet was found outside a Tybee convenience store.

The Georgia Corrections Department says a team of state and local law enforcement is searching for Bell but Myrick wonders why Bell was out of custody to begin with.  "I don't think he should have ever been released from prison."

According to Georgia Corrections Department spokesperson Susan Phillips, Bell was released from custody in May of 2007.  Phillips says he had been sentenced originally in 2004 on two counts of molestation (15 years) but that Bell got credit for time served and went immediately to probation.  But Phillips says less than a month later in April of 2004, a warrant was issued for Bell's arrest because he'd already violated probation.  Phillips says Bell went to prisdon for three years on the violation and again, was released in May of last year.

Just about two weeks ago on April 2, the Georgia Sex Registration Board ordered Bell to wear the electronic monitoring device after his case was reviewed. "Well clearly he did not want to comply with the rules and conditions of his probation," Terry Enoch from the Chatham County Sheriff's Office told us Wednesday night.  "He took the extra effort to remove the ankle bracelet."  The sheriff's office is one of the local agencies helping in the search.  So is the Tybee police department.  Phillips also tells WSAV that  the state's "fugitive agents" along with U.S. Marshals are now also involved in the search.  "This is our number one priority," says Phillips.

Myrick says the case has caused a lot of concern for some on Tybee Island. "We don't know Bell is still here of course, but we don't know he's not," he says.  Myrick also thinks there was too much delay in telling residents that Bell was at large.  He and his wife found out sometime Tuesday.  "The quicker we found out about this guy being out here and being free, then the more we could have reacted," he says.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Department of Corrections is sorting through the timetable of events.  Phillips says they are trying to ascertain when they were informed and in turn when the word was sent out to local authorities who began the search for Bell.  Authorities say that Bell's tracking device is designed to send a signal when removed, including an email to his probation officer.  Phillips says she's not sure if that officer received the email, she says that's one of the things the state is sorting out.  She promised more information by Friday.