Long term ordered for sex offender

A Spokane man with a long record of sex offenses – including voyeurism in a downtown restroom – got a maximum sentence Wednesday for attempting to rape a 54-year-old grandmother of eight.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor gave Joshua J. Hood, 22, a prison term of 17 1/2 years to life. Hood sought the minimum sentence of 13 years to life.

A parole board will decide whether Hood can safely be released at the end of his 17 1/2 -year term.

Hood “just messed with the wrong woman” when he attempted to rape his latest victim last December, according to Deputy Prosecutor Patrick Johnson.

The woman was approaching her car in a parking lot at 1500 W. Fourth Ave. when Hood walked up and made sexual advances after asking the location of a bank. The woman warned him to leave her alone, but he grabbed her arm and tried to force her to the ground.

It was Hood who wound up on the ground, though. The woman kneed him in the groin and drove away while he writhed in pain.

At the time, Hood was a Level III registered sex offender, considered highly likely to reoffend. The victim’s description of her attacker quickly led police to Hood, and the woman picked him out of a photo lineup.

Also, the woman told police her attacker had been carrying what appeared to be a half-case of 7-Up. A detective located a surveillance video of Hood buying soda pop at the Safeway store at Fourth and Maple Street, across the street from where the attack occurred. The video was recorded just before the attempted rape occurred, Johnson said.

In May, a jury convicted Hood of second-degree attempted rape.

Hood continued to claim innocence Wednesday while Assistant Public Defender Kari Reardon pleaded for leniency on grounds that Hood had been sexually abused as a child. Hood’s victim joined Johnson in calling for the maximum standard sentence.

In passing sentence, O’Connor said Hood had responded poorly to sex-offender and drug-abuse treatment.

Hood had four prior convictions, three of them for sex offenses. The most recent was last year, for voyeurism.

Security guards caught Hood in a ground-floor women’s restroom at River Park Square in January 2003, four days after he used a hand mirror to look at a female employee while she was in the restroom.

The victim said she noticed a man’s hand maneuvering a mirror under the wall of her stall. She said she kicked the mirror away, and a man in the next stall laughed. The woman went to alert security personnel, but the man was gone when guards arrived.

Four days later, another employee was in the restroom and saw Hood enter one of the stalls. She said she told him he was in the wrong restroom, and he replied in a high-pitched voice, “I am a lady.”

Aware of the mirror incident, the woman summoned security guards who caught Hood in the restroom. The guards said Hood swung his arms and kicked them until one of them punched him in the face.

In 2002, Hood was convicted of felony harassment for threatening to kill a woman he had been dating for four months.

That incident occurred in December 2001 while he was a passenger in a car the woman was driving. They quarreled and he grabbed the wheel, saying he wanted both of them to die, and the car ran over a sidewalk and into some bushes.

The woman said Hood punched her in the face three times with a closed fist. He claimed he hit her because she wouldn’t let him out.

Hood also has two 1995 juvenile convictions in Douglas County, for indecent liberties and attempted indecent liberties.

In the first of those convictions, Johnson said, Hood exposed himself to a woman who was running on a track in Bridgeport, Wash. Then he repeatedly blocked her path when she tried to get away. When Hood grabbed her buttocks, the woman hit him and threw a stick at him to escape.

Five months later, Hood entered a women’s restroom at a campground in Douglas County, grabbed a woman by the wrist and attempted to kiss her. He fled when she hit him over the head with a pan, Johnson said.