East Chicago Man Gets 6 Months in Jail for Scaring Girl

A Northwest Indiana man was sentenced earlier this week to six months but released on time served in the Lake County Jail for misdemeanor child intimidation.

East Chicago resident Charles Raymond Stewart Jr., 61, pleaded guilty to the charge Monday, and prosecutors dropped a child solicitation count filed in May.

Stewart, a convicted sex offender involving two children younger than 13 in Muskegon County, Mich., admitted in Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Ross Boswell’s court that he was a “hard-drinking man.”

On May 6 he was with two friends at an apartment in the 4700 block of Magoun Avenue in East Chicago when one of the friends went to purchase more gin, but passed out in the hallway, prosecutors said.

A neighbor girl, who was 10 at the time, went to tell Stewart that his friend was passed out at the bottom of the stairs. She woke Stewart, who responded with an obscene remark and made her afraid, prosecutors said.

Stewart was given credit for time served and was ordered released from jail.