Harnett County sheriff’s deputies say a man who served time in jail for a sexual assault on an Apex jogger was arrested again this week.
On this occasion, Adam Sipes was arrested for burglary after they say he entered the bedroom of a 12-year-old neighbor.
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Sipes, 32, is a registered sex offender convicted in November 2021 of felony second-degree kidnapping and misdemeanor sexual battery. The North Carolina Sex Offender and Public Protection Registry also shows a 2009 conviction for forcible touching in New York.
He was sentenced to up to four years in prison for the New Year’s Day 2019 attack on a jogger, but when time served was factored in, he was released in May of this year. (State law only requires a sentence of up to 150 days for misdemeanor sexual battery.)
On Wednesday morning, deputies say Sipes was rummaging through the drawers of the 12-year-old while she, her mother and 8-month-old sister slept.
The home’s surveillance system showed a man enter the home through unlocked doors.
The woman, who asked WRAL Investigates not to identify her family, said her daughter told her, “There was a random man in my room last night.”
The mother asked her daughter if she was sure. “I asked her that question three times,” the mother said. “She was like ‘yes, yes.’”
She said Sipes entered and exited the home three times.
Around 5:57 a.m. Wednesday, Harnett County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the family’s home on Moonlight Drive after the mother reported a home invasion.
Deputies said Sipes entered an unlocked home and went through the 12-year-old girl’s bedroom while she was inside the room.
“I could hear the fear in her voice,” the girl’s mother told WRAL Investigates.
Upon learning that Sipes lived down the street, the mother said, “It sent chills down. I was so scared. As a mother, you don’t want to hear your child or children as being violated by anyone, and him just being in her room.”
Sipes is charged with first-degree burglary and being held in the Harnett County Detention Center on $150,000 bond. He is due back in court on Sept. 27.
"He knew exactly where he was coming and knew exactly what he wanted," the girl's mother said. "He had to see her going down there to the bus stop, and he had to be looking at her to see which house she came into."