Adam Lee Brown, HIV-positive sex offender, assaulted boy, 10, at Wendy's bathroom, Portland police say
(CBS/AP) PORTLAND, Ore. - Oregon police said they arrested Adam Lee Brown at a Portland restaurant where he allegedly pulled a 10-year-old boy in the bathroom, attempted to sexually assault him and then stabbed him several times. Brown was already on parole for trying to infect children with HIV nearly 20 years ago.
Officers said the boy would have died without immediate care. His injuries from the Sunday attack were severe enough to require surgery.
Police said the suspect pulled the 10-year-old boy into a Wendy's bathroom and locked the door on Sunday. After the boy fought back, Portland police said Brown stabbed him.
A Wendy's employee opened the locked door and Brown shoved the 10-year-old out of the bathroom, but locked himself inside and told arriving officers that he had a gun. Police evacuated the fast-food restaurant and brought in crisis negotiators.
After the two-hour standoff, Brown surrendered. Police found a knife, but no gun.
Brown's arrest on Sunday marks the second set of child sex abuse charges leveled against him, with the first investigation happening two decades ago.
In 1993, Brown was convicted of three counts of first-degree sodomy, each involving a child. Initial charges included attempted murder because Brown, the son of a church pastor, is HIV-positive. He ended up pleading no contest to reduced charges.
At least nine children in the small logging town of Roseburg, Ore., told police that Brown molested them over the course of several months in 1992. According to a criminal complaint, the children said Brown told them not to tell and threatened them with knives, scissors and matches. One child said Brown once burned a Bible and warned that Satan would come if they didn't do what he wanted, reported The Associated Press.
Brown's wife at the time told the AP in 1993 that her husband contracted HIV in Southern California while he was stationed there with the U.S. Marines. A lay preacher at Fair Oaks Community Church, Brown served nine years in the Marines as a computer technician before his discharge in the early 1990s.
"God was always in the picture," said Nancy Brown said about her husband's religious upbringing. "But he thought Satan would deliver the boys."
The case came during a peak in the AIDS crisis and amid fears that vengeful patients would willfully infect unsuspecting bystanders, reported the AP. Brown spent 11 years in Oregon's prison system.
Brown pleaded not guilty Monday in Multnomah County Circuit Court to charges related to Sunday's attack, including kidnapping, attempted murder and assault. He appeared in court surrounded by sheriff's deputies and wearing a "suicide smock," a rip-resistant vest that prevents inmates from tearing off strips of clothing with which to hang themselves.