A Lewis County Superior Court judge has ordered a competency evaluation for a sex offender registered in Lewis County who is accused of failing to report to the sheriff’s office for mandated check-ins last month.
The defendant, Daniel Howard Rountree Jr., 45, is required to register as a Level 2 sex offender due to prior sex offense convictions out of California, including a sexual battery conviction from 1990 and four other sex offenses involving minors in the ‘90s.
Rountree has been convicted of failure to register as a sex offender twice: once in California in 2007 and once in Washington in 2016.
Rountree first registered with the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office on July 6, 2022, indicating he intended to live in Lewis County as a transient and was currently living at a hotel in Centralia. The sheriff’s office requires transient sex offenders to check in with the sheriff’s office once a week, which Rountree allegedly failed to do twice between July 11 and July 18, according to court documents. Rountree’s community corrections officer confirmed that Rountree had also not reported to the department of corrections in two weeks.
A deputy with the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office located Rountree and arrested him on Aug. 4. He has since been charged with one count of failure to register as a sex offender.
Rountree refused to appear virtually in court for his preliminary hearing on Aug. 5, according to a Department of Corrections officer. His attorney, Rachael Tiller, said Rountree underwent a mental health evaluation nine months ago that found him unable to stand trial for another case. She requested a competency evaluation for Rountree in this case, which Judge J. Andrew Toynbee granted.
