Sovereign citizen busted after hiding under woman’s bed
Sovereign citizens pop up just about anywhere these days — spouting their sometimes violent, antigovernment rhetoric.
But under a woman’s bed?
That’s what happened recently in Ira, Vermont, according to state police there who arrested 50-year-old Roy H. Kuhlmann at the home of a woman he had met last year through an online dating service.
The suspect, from Johnsburg, Vermont, was booked into jail where he remains today under $5,000 bail on felony charges of unlawful trespass, obstructing justice and two misdemeanor counts of domestic assault.
Vermont State Police Trooper Katrina Ducharme said in a court filing that she was dispatched to a home on Route 133 in Ira on the evening of February 22.
The woman living in the home said she had met Kuhlman about nine months ago but their relationship soured when he “threatened to kill her several times if she ever cheated on him,” the Rutland Herald reports.
The relationship ended, the victim claimed, in November when the suspect pushed her onto a bed, pinned her down and spat on her, the newspaper report says.
Although she believed her life was “in imminent danger,” she continued getting unsolicited social media messages from the man, suggesting he was in another city.
But when she returned home on February 22 and briefly sat down, “Kuhlmann [suddenly] crawled out from under [her] bed,” the officer said in her report.
The woman said Kuhlmann didn’t have permission to be in her home, much less to be hiding under her bed.
When the state police officer responded to the home, Kuhlmann was hiding behind a door as the woman nervously responded to questions, suggesting someone else was in the home.
Stepping out from behind the door, the suspect “identified himself as being a sovereign citizen and stated he did not recognize my lawful authority,” the state police officer said her report.
Despite the gobbledygook, the officer’s lawful authority nonetheless led to an immediate arrest.
In a police interview, Kuhlmann admitted being in the woman’s house without permission, initially “hiding under the bed with the intent to catch her cheating.”
Another sovereign uncovered.
