Toddler's family wants sex predator "locked up for life"

by Kelli Cheatham (kcheatham@wsbt.com)

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Larry Ray Hostetler

Larry Ray Hostetler (Photo provided)

By WSBT News1

MISHAWAKA — Imagine you're at the store with your young child when a man unzips his pants and exposes himself. Police say that's what happened at the K-Mart on McKinley in Mishawaka. The 75-year-old suspect, Larry Hostetler, admitted he’s a sex offender right after police arrested him.

Three-year-old Jaliyiah Coleman rides her bike, laughs and smiles like any other happy little girl.

“Seeing something like that happen to her, it hurt my feelings,” said her mom, Fannie Wade.

That’s because now Jaliyiah is the victim of a sex crime.

Her grandmother and a store security guard told police they saw the whole thing.

“As we started going down the aisles and stuff, every aisle we would get to, he would be at the next corner of the aisle,” remembered Janice Wade. “And I was like ‘What is this man doing?’”

A police report says it happened in the toy aisle at K-Mart in Mishawaka Thursday afternoon.

“When I walked up to the corner and I looked around the corner, he’s standing there with his shirt up and he’s just shaking his privacy!” Janice said. “And [Jaliyiah] was just looking!”

“She’s 3,” Fannie said, before a long pause. “That’s something you wouldn't expect your child, your niece your nephew, to have to go through. I don't wish that on nobody.”

Jaliyiah told investigators the suspect "showed me his boy part."

What's more, Hostetler has a history as a sexual predator. In 1982 and 1991 a judge sentenced him for child molestation. He was convicted a third time in 2004 for “vicarious sexual gratification.”

“Your first question is how is he able to do what he’s doing?” asked Fannie. “How can he walk the streets and be a sex offender?”

“He needs to be locked up for life,” Janice added.

Through their anger, Jaliyiah's family is struggling with what to do from here.

“Seeing something like that happen to her [on the store’s surveillance tape], it hurt my feelings. I didn't know what to expect from it, how to go about it, If she was gonna ask questions, I didn't know what to even do,” said Fannie, on the verge of tears.

The St. Joseph County Prosecutor's office charged Hostetler with performing sexual conduct in the presence of a minor and public indecency. His arraignment in front of a judge is scheduled to happen Monday afternoon.

Investigators took the recorded video from the store. It is part of the case, and K-Mart would not comment on the ongoing police investigation.

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