A 74-year-old Centralia man who was the subject of an Online Predator Prevention investigation has pleaded guilty to one of the four felony charges pending against him in Clinton County Court.
George Running admitted in a plea agreement to a Class 4 felony charge of traveling to meet a minor. Three other counts, grooming, indecent solicitation of a minor, and solicitation to meet a child, were all dismissed.
Running will be sentenced on November 4th.
He has been in custody since May, when the group Online Predator Prevention confronted Running at the Centralia Walmart, where he had agreed to meet what he believed to be an underage person with whom he had held explicit conversations on the Grindr dating app. He was reportedly going to take the minor to his home while his wife was in the hospital. But Running was actually talking online with a decoy when setting up the meeting.
Online Predator Prevention posts its encounters with those who think they are meeting underage persons on their website.
Running could face two to ten years in prison or a probationary term at the sentencing hearing, plus having to register as a sex offender for up to ten years.
