Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of sexually violent predator Merle Wakefield, who disappeared a week ago from his job at an Amazon processing facility in Rancho Bernardo.<\/p>\n
A felony warrant has also been issued for Wakefield’s arrest for failure to register as a sex offender. Sheriff’s investigators say Wakefield cut off his ankle monitor before his disappearance.<\/p>\n
Law enforcement sources close to the case tell NBC 7 that Wakefield left his job at the Amazon facility on Via Esprillo at 3:30 a.m. last Friday.<\/p>\n
A county BOLO alert released four hours after Wakefield disappeared indicated that he left in a white Toyota Camry. The Sheriff’s Department has since said it cannot verify that information and has reported no other means by which Wakefield may have left the area.<\/p>\n
The Sheriff’s Department’s San Diego Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement Task Force is leading the investigation. The U.S. Marshals Service and San Diego Fugitive Task Force are also searching for Wakefield.<\/p>\n
Wakefield was convicted of lewd acts on a child in 1981 and rape in 1990. After serving several years in prison and in a state mental hospital, Wakefield was given transient conditional release.<\/p>\n
His disappearance has renewed concerns among some Rancho Bernardo residents, including Eric Glitzl.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was afraid for my daughter reading about who is and what he did. I was like, oh my god, how am I going to protect my daughter?\u201d Glitzl said.<\/p>\n
Five years ago, Glitzl joined neighbors who opposed sexually violent predator Douglas Badger, 78, living in their Rancho Bernardo neighborhood. Badger is a convicted child molester and kidnapper and is identified as a sexual sadist.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of us were just kind of rocked back on our heels,” Glitzl said.<\/p>\n
Wakefield’s disappearance has rekindled those concerns for Glitzl.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t trust them to police themselves, to take care of themselves. It makes no sense to me,\u201d Glitzl said.<\/p>\n
As the search entered its second week, Glitzl also questioned where Wakefield could have gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand how far he could have gotten,\u201d Glitzl said.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of sexually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15771,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-483661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-rancho-bernardo","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}