A New Scotland (NY) man is being held in the Albany County Jail on attempted murder and rape charges. 23-year-old Adam Croote allegedly raped and tried to kill a 10-year-old girl in Berne.
Croote was a longtime family friend of the victim, and was a person the young girls’ parents trusted to watch their child.
In 2005 Croote was designated a Level 2 Sex Offender in Massachusetts after being convicted of a sex offense against a 25-year-old female.
At 17 in Wendell, Mass., he sexually assaulted a woman who worked at a residential school for sexually abusive youths while she was driving him to school from a doctor’s appointment, according to a Worcester Telegram & Gazette report from 2005. He then grabbed the wheel of the van and turned it toward a stone wall, causing a crash, and ran away until a police dog found him.
He has been arrested in New York for failing to register as a sex offender in the past.
In addition to the rape and attempted murder charges, Croote is also charged with 6 felonies, and 2 misdemeanors, including strangulation, forcible touching and criminal obstruction of breathing,
Croote is being held in the Albany County Jail without bail.