Thursday, 4:30 PM
Man pleads not guilty to kidnapping on Boylston
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
A homeless man pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and other charges today after prosecutors accused him of trying to snatch a 10-year-old boy Saturday from a sidewalk on Boylston Street in a busy Back Bay shopping district.
A lawyer for David Allen Johnson, 39, entered a not guilty plea on his client's behalf in Boston Municipal Court today to charges that also included attempted kidnapping and assault and battery. He was ordered held on $75,000 cash bail after a prosecutor said he had been convicted in 2002 of exposing himself to a group of children.
According to a police report, Johnson put a jacket around the boy from Haverhill at about 5 p.m. on Saturday and tried to force him to walk down the street. The boy yelled, according to the report, and his father came and got him.
Police said that they stopped Johnson a short distance away on Boylston Street and the father said: "That's him officers. He's the one that tried to take my son from me."
According to the report, Johnson told police: "I was only kidding."
In court today, a defense attorney asked Judge Sally Kelly for lower bail. "We just don't know exactly what was going on" at the time of the alleged kidnapping, said the defense attorney, whose name was not immediately available.
Leora Joseph, the chief of the child protection unit at the Suffolk County district attorney's office, argued for the $75,000 bail because she said Johnson had been convicted in Boston Municipal Court of lewd and lascivious behavior and indecent exposure.
The judge sided with Joseph and ordered the $75,000 bail. Johnson is scheduled to appear again in court on Jan. 16.
