Keith Dewayne Lavinge
SAN BERNARDINO – A 32-year-old registered sex offender, caring for five children whose parents were in jail, was taken into custody this week.
Detectives from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Crimes Against Children took Keith Dewayne Lavinge, of San Bernardino, into custody on Wednesday.
Lavinge, jailed on a $250,000 bond, was due in court on Friday facing charges of perjury and failure to register as a sex offender, according to detectives from the Crimes Against Children detail.
Social workers from the Children and Family Services alerted the detail this week when an investigation at the home, located on the 200 block of East 2nd Street, was taking place.
During the social worker’s investigation, it was determined that the five children, whose biological mother and father were both incarcerated for undisclosed crimes, were being cared for by Lavinge. “All five children were living with the mother’s boyfriend,” said Sgt. Dana Foster, a member of the county’s special detail, “ (who is) Keith Lavinge.”
Lavinge was previously been twice convicted for sexual assault of a child under the age of 14, according to law enforcement reports.
Foster and Det. Donald Patton began investigating into whether or not Lavinge had registered to local authorities under the state’s mandatory registration policy.
It was revealed that Lavinge “had been registering as being a transient and has not been honest with law enforcement about his residency (at the current address on 2nd Street),” said Foster.
Evidence was located at that residence that proved Lavinge had been living at that location for over a year. After he was arrested and taken to the West Valley Detention Center, the children were placed into protective custody, later released to social workers from the county’s Children and Family Services.
Foster said that further investigation is being conducted into the welfare of the children, whose ages were not disclosed, “during the time they were living with Lavinge.”
