GPS helps collar suspect in doughnut shop exposure[quote]

[massgrunt]

I go there all the time. Best hot chocalate around. Never felt the need to flash them, though. It's not THAT good.


http://enterprise.southofboston.com/...ews/news05.txt

WEST BRIDGEWATER — A global positioning system used by the state to track snow-removal trucks led investigators to a man who police say exposed himself to a clerk in a doughnut shop early Monday.

Using MassHighway's GPS, authorities found Jason A. Wordell, 32, of Somerset and charged him with open and gross lewdness and disorderly conduct in the incident at Dunkin' Donuts on Route 106 near the Route 24 interchange.

He was arraigned later Monday in Brockton District Court.

When the incident occurred, Wordell was working as a driver for a sanding truck for Carney Brothers Trucking of Raynham, a state snow and ice contractor, according to Jon Carlisle, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Highway Department.

This is the first time since the department introduced its GPS system a year ago with state snow-removal contractors that any wrongdoing on the part of drivers has been detected, Carlisle said.

"They never would have caught him without GPS," said Alysia Shunstrom, manager of the Dunkin' Donuts adjacent to a Shell gas station.

The incident happened at about 4:15 a.m. Monday.

West Bridgewater police officers Greg Ames and Christopher Werner turned to the state after viewing the surveillance tape at Dunkin' Donuts, where the suspect appeared to be a plow driver, Detective Sgt. Victor Flaherty said.

According to Shunstrom, who said she viewed the surveillance tape with police, the suspect walked around the store for a minute before approaching the Dunkin' Donuts counter and ordering coffee.

She said it was clear he was exposing himself even before he unzipped his jacket in what she said appeared to be an attempt to get the attention of the clerk, a 40-year-old woman.

Shunstrom said the man alternately looked down at himself and then at the clerk as if he were checking to see if she was looking at him.

"When he was walking out, he turned around and smirked at her," Shunstrom said.

The other person working at the Dunkin' Donuts counter and the Shell station clerk who was at the other end of the shop did not notice what was happening, according to Shunstrom.

"She (the victim) called me — she was devastated," Shunstrom said.

The GPS device in the truck Wordell was driving led investigators to the MassHighway yard in Bridgewater, where they found him, police said.

Carney said he planned to fire Wordell Monday afternoon even though the suspect's wife had called to profess her husband's innocence. Wordell has been with the company for about six months, Carney said.

"I never ever heard of anybody in their right mind who would do this," Carney said. "He needs help."

GPS, developed for the military in the 1970s, works with satellites transmitting signals from orbit and allows users to locate a person or object, such as a truck or other vehicle, carrying a receiver.

At MassHighway, the system is monitored on state computers at district and central locations, Carlisle said.

When MassHighway announced the plan in 2003 to install GPS devices in its snow-removal trucks, the state association of snow and ice contractors put up a fight. Carney, an owner of Carney Brothers Trucking, threatened to stop plowing for the state if drivers were required to carry the tracking devices.

But the Massachusetts Snow and Ice Contractors Association relented, and the tracking devices have been in use for the past year.

Contacted Monday about the arrest of the driver, Carney downplayed the role of GPS in identifying the suspect. Carney said he would have cooperated with investigators and provided information leading to the driver.

MassHighway has 5,100 snow and ice contractors who are paid $50 to $138 an hour, depending on the equipment they are using, Carlisle said.

[Phre4k]

Nice!