FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — A convicted rapist was serving a life sentence before he was accidentally released from prison on Friday morning.
Now, authorities are searching for him. Munoz-Mendez is described as 5'9" and weighs around 186 pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes.
This is what we know.
- According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, Tony Maycon Munoz-Mendez was set free from Rogers State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia around 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 25.
- The public was notified Monday, October 28.
- He was convicted and charged with two counts of rape and aggravated child molestation in Gwinnett County for crimes he committed in 2010 and 2012.
- The Gwinnett County prosecutor on the rape case, John Warr, said Munoz-Mendez had been living with his girlfriend and her family. When the girl was about 10, Munoz-Mendez began to molest her, and then he raped her repeatedly beginning in 2010.
- Munoz-Mendez continued to insist, through his trial, that he had done nothing wrong.
- The girl's mother never reported the crime to authorities and believed Munoz-Mendez denial until she was charged and pleaded guilty to/with Child Cruelty in the Second Degree, for failing to intervene to save her daughter.
- His life sentence began in April 2015, according to Department of Corrections records. He has only served four and a half years of his life sentence when he was released on Friday by mistake.
- Warr says no one from the state notified him, or the girl - now in her teens - or her foster mother, that Munoz-Mendez is out and on the run.
- It's not yet clear exactly how or why he was released.
Photos: Tony Maycon Munoz-Mendez
Georgia’s Department of Corrections is asking for the public's help in catching Munoz-Mendez, and warning people - if you see him, don’t approach him, but call 911.
The prosecutor who helped put him away said it's incomprehensible to imagine how a convicted rapist was let out by mistake.
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