May 19, 2013
The Louisiana man accused of kidnapping a 16-year-old girl from her Panama City Beach home Aug. 31 is jailed in Louisiana. And police said the man, Ernie Paul Dugas, faced similar charges five years ago.
Court records show Dugas was charged in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1997 with two counts of molesting a five-year-old child nearly two years before that. Dugas pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of obscenity. He got a suspended three-year prison sentence and three years supervised probation.
Thirty-one-year-old Dugas is jailed in Louisiana charged with armed robbery of two truck stops. Police said those holdups took place after Dugas kidnapped the Panama City Beach girl.
The teen got away from her abductor during a rest stop in Orange, Texas, 14 hours after she was dragged from her aunt's home.
