Investigators probe sex offender’s death at police station

AUGUSTA – Last weekend’s death of a man whose body was found in the lobby restroom of the Augusta Police Department is under investigation, according to a department official.

The dead man, Dean Sawyer, 51, was a registered sex offender who apparently had no other place to sleep.

Sawyer had battled mental illness, alcoholism and drug abuse with little success, according to his former wife, Laurette Theriault. Sawyer spent more than two years behind bars for shooting a man in 1999 and was freed from the Maine State Prison in July 2007, the Kennebec Journal reported Thursday.

“When he got out of prison, he had no place to go,” Theriault said. “Nobody wanted him around. As an ex-wife, I did what I could to help him. But I did not want him living with me.”

The newspaper said that most recently he served a 50-day term in Kennebec County jail for two counts of failing to register as a sex offender. He was released Feb. 5, registered with Augusta police as a sex offender and died several days later, the newspaper reported.

Augusta police Lt. Kevin Lully said Sawyer’s death is the subject of an investigation by the department.

“Our chief wants to make sure we did what we could to protect his safety,” Lully said.

The night before Sawyer died, Augusta police contacted Theriault, she said, asking whether she would pay to lodge her former husband in a hotel that night. She said she fears he was turned away from shelters because he was intoxicated.

When she declined, police let Sawyer sleep in the lobby of the station, where there is a long wooden bench. Sawyer stayed in the lobby for a while, police said, then locked himself in the adjacent restroom, where he apparently drank several beers, according to the Kennebec Journal.

The next day, Feb. 10, Theriault was awakened by a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy, telling her that Sawyer had been found dead.