One of two longtime residents who escaped in separate breakouts last month from a low-security section of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program facility in St. Peter was given probation for his unapproved departure.
Beau-Jacob Edward Zimmer, 45, was sentenced Wednesday in Nicollet County District Court to a year’s probation after pleading guilty to a felony escape charge in connection with him cutting off his ankle monitor with a kitchen knife on May 9 and pedaling away from the treatment center on a bicycle.
That same morning, law enforcement was told of a “suspicious male walking on a road” a few miles from the facility, the charges read. Two officers found Zimmer and arrested him without incident. The knife was in his sweatshirt pocket, the complaint said.
A petition filed in Wright County District Court in 2015 to have Zimmer civilly committed to the sex offender program noted his history of sexual offenses that started when he was 11 and continued into adulthood. His first victims were girls as young as 3 years old. He also sexually assaulted a 9-year-old boy he was babysitting, the petition read.
At age 14, he attempted to sexually assault a 46-year-old woman on a Burnsville walking path and also broke into two women’s homes and stole intimate apparel, according to the petition.
Once an adult, additional assaults involved lewd behavior during indecent exposure on college campuses and elsewhere, the filing said.
On May 16, 54-year-old Steven Loren Edwards allegedly escaped from the facility by putting a dummy in his bed and strapping it with his GPS ankle bracelet.
According to the criminal complaint filed against Edwards, St. Peter facility staff notified police that he was missing. His roommate told staff that Edwards, a resident since October 2011, needed to be checked on because he appeared to have been in bed for quite some time without moving.
