Sex offender charged with kidnapping, assaulting woman

TAMPA (FOX 13) - Police say a sex offender is in jail for kidnapping a woman in Ybor City and taking her back to his home to sexually assault her.

According to TPD, it was around 2:30 a.m. Sunday when Barry Eugene Lineberger took the 22-year-old woman "by threat of violence" back to his rented room on Terra Ceia Drive in Tampa.  That's where he allegedly assaulted her.

The woman was able to use for phone to call for help at some point.  When officers arrived, they said they could hear her crying for help.  They burst through the door and found Lineberger, completely naked.

The 50-year-old was arrested on charges of sexual battery and kidnapping. 

Neighbor Mercedes Jones says he was acting strange all day Saturday.

"As a woman, he gave you this eerie feeling," she said. "I really believe Saturday he was going to do something to me. He sat there and stared at me for like a good ten minutes."

Police say early the next morning, he struck up a conversation with a 22-year-old woman in Ybor City, and lured her into his car by saying he forgot something.

"Originally she was happy to chat with him," said Steve Hegarty of the Tampa Police Dept. "He was able to get her separate from her friends, everything was fine until he started talking about getting into his car."

Police say she began texting friends she was uncomfortable, but it was too late.

Deputies say she was taken to his boarding house and assaulted for as long as three hours.

She was eventually able to use GPS on her cell phone to show deputies she was at 5614 Terra Ceia Drive.

They arrived to hear her screaming.

They smashed the door down, finding her naked.

"We don't know what the suspect's intentions were after the sexual assualt," said Cristal Nunez Bermudez of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

News reports from 2007 show he was accused of much the same thing, the New York Post saying he raped and sodomized a 21-year-old woman he lured to his apartment.

He registered as a sex offender, and now deputies say, he's a repeat one.

Deputies also say that they expect more charges to be filed because he did not register his new address with them.