A registered sex offender, who had been sought on rape charges since Baltimore County sheriff's deputies mistakenly released him from custody last month, was apprehended Tuesday night in the city's Mid-Town Belvedere neighborhood.
Baltimore City police spokesman Jeremy Silbert said members of the regional Warrant Apprehension Task Force received information about 34-year-old Ernest Clark's possible whereabouts and conducted surveillance in the area. He was spotted outside in the 200 block of E. Chase St. at about 6:15 p.m. and was taken into custody without incident.
Authorities did not initially disclose that they were searching for a man they consider dangerous until questioned by a reporter on Monday. Only then did officials release Clark's photo.
Silbert said the ensuing media coverage generated the tip that ultimately led to his arrest.
On June 14, jail officials took Clark to the Baltimore County Detention Center. The next day, he appeared at a paternity hearing in Baltimore County Circuit Court. But while returning him to the county jail, the sheriff's office lost the document ordering Clark be held.
Instead of sending Clark, of Northeast Baltimore, back to his prison cell in the city to await trial in the rape case, county jail officials released him. On June 16, the judge in the paternity case ordered him returned to custody. A Baltimore circuit judge issued an arrest warrant on June 24 when Clark failed to show up for the initial hearing on the rape case.
City police acknowledged Monday that, despite linking Clark through DNA evidence in 2006 to an attack that occurred in 2000 in Herring Run Park, detectives in the sexual assault unit essentially shelved the case after deciding that the victim did not want to proceed with pressing charges, The Sun reported.
The department's cold case squad launched a new investigation in 2009 that led to Clark's being charged two months ago in the rape. Between the time he was first named a suspect in 2006 and the most recent criminal complaint, Clark was arrested eight times on various charges.
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