bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 419-6632
HILLSBOROUGH -- A registered sex offender, who picked his girlfriend's daughter up at school, was sentenced to 12 to 15 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to being a sex offender on school grounds.
The man, Ivory Donell Evans, 30, also was sentenced to 16 to 20 months in prison for strangling the same girlfriend while she was a patient at UNC Hospitals.
Evans is required to register as a sex offender because he was convicted in 2004 of taking indecent liberties with a minor.
The first charge occurred in May after the girlfriend called Ephesus Road Elementary School to tell school administrators that Evans was going to pick her daughter up from school the next day. When Evans arrived, the school staff noticed that the girl at first seemed to be afraid of Evans, but then she calmed down and went home with him, said Assistant District Attorney Morgan Whitney.
The school staff decided to check on Evans and found he was a registered sex offender, so they called the Chapel Hill Police Department, and they charged Evans with the sex offender violation, Whitney said.
In a separate incident, the girlfriend, who was hospitalized because she has one lung and other respiratory problems, was assaulted by Evans, said Assistant District Attorney Michelle Williams. Evans sat with her through the night at the hospital, but when morning came, he asked her for money because he had to go to court, Williams said.
When the woman said she had no money, he asked for her debit card but she refused to give it to him, Williams said. When the woman got up to go to the bathroom, Evans attacked her by pushing her up against a wall and strangling her.
He let the woman go, and she then went to her purse and gave him the debit card. The woman couldn't breathe and suffered injuries from the attack, Williams said.
Assistant Public Defender Susan Seahorn told the judge that Evans and the woman had a 10-year relationship, and that since he was put in jail in September, she has been in contact with him and sent him money.
Following the plea agreement, Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour sentenced Evans to 16 to 20 months for the assault to be followed by 12 to 15 months for the sex offender violation.
Baddour warned Evans that even if the woman wrote him a letter in prison, he should be wary about writing her back since that would be a violation of a domestic violence protection order not to have any contact with her.
In addition to the indecent liberties conviction, Evans also was previously convicted of common law robbery and possession with intent to sell counterfeit controlled substances.
