He unzipped his pup tent, his abode in a patch of wilderness off Veronica Shoemaker Boulevard in Fort Myers.
He grabbed a flashlight and his ID and stowed them in a book bag hitched over his shoulders.
He was a Boy Scout, he said, but that did not prepare him for this.
“It’s survival of the fittest.” He is 46, but looks older.
A hammock stretched between melaleuca trees is the most comfy spot for his 250-pound frame. His kitchen is an upside-down grocery cart fashioned into a grill for coffee and soup. A wooden palette is his coffee table.
On this afternoon last month, he was in pursuit of a hot meal. He stepped onto a worn path hemmed by slash pine trees. He passed the camps of his neighbors, who reside under makeshift hovels of tarps and tents in this small colony of homeless people.
But this camp is unique: its inhabitants include sex offenders, who said the Lee County Sheriff’s Office directed them to this hidden spot about a quarter mile east into woods that run along a trail. The woods sit across from the city’s Trailhead Neighborhood Park and abut the Sienna at Vista Lake complex of one- and two-bedroom apartments, where on this afternoon young men played football in the parking lot.
He had lived there since October. He had struggled to find someone to hire him after five years in federal prison for possessing child pornography. And it was difficult for him to retain jobs because of mental illness.
He said the sheriff’s office showed him the camp location.
“They’re trying to give us a safe haven.” “They keep a close eye on us.”
The sheriff’s office refused to comment on the assertions.
Sheriff Mike Scott has directed his personnel not to answer questions from this newspaper. “As you know, we don’t entertain interviews or answer questions with The News-Press,” spokeswoman Tiffany Wood wrote in an email.
But Fort Myers police and social service providers said they’ve also been told it was the sheriff’s office that sent them there.
This much is for sure: Law enforcement knows about the camp. Last year, the sheriff’s office tallied about 120 routine calls checking on sex offenders near the intersection where the camp is located, mostly occurring after another camp of sex offenders off Ortiz Avenue was disbanded by city police at the property owner’s request. Since May, at least 10 transient sex offenders and one sexual predator have registered to the camp, records show. Six are currently registered there with convictions that range from sexual battery to lewd behavior toward children, according to a check Friday of Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s sex offender public registry. ..Source.. by Janine Zeitlin
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