The police said, a wanted sex offender who disappeared after leaving the federal prison in Virginia was caught on Wednesday in the District.

The U.S. Marshals Service for the Eastern District of Virginia said in a statement that, Matthew Ezekiel Stager, aged 45, was released from the federal prison in Petersburg, Virginia, on Feb. 2nd and was supposed to fly to a transitional center in Texas that day, but Stager never showed up. On Wednesday, authorities sought the public’s help in finding Stager.

About 2:40 p.m., the D.C. police officers arrested Stager in the 500 block of 4th Street NW near the Judiciary Square Metro station, D.C. Superior Court and D.C. police headquarters.

Now Hunters To Wear Blaze Pink

A spokesman for the U.S. marshals said that Stager was convicted in 1999 in the North Carolina for indecent liberties with a minor, a charge which forced him to register as a sex offender.

The spokesman said, in the year 2013, Stager was convicted of failing to register as a sex offender, a federal crime, and was serving a five-year sentence.

According to the spokesman, the Bureau of Prisons allows some offenders to “self-report” when moving from one facility to another, but Stager, who was being moved from a medium-security facility to the transitional center near Austin, failed to show up.

A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said that Stager was headed to a residential reentry center, or a halfway house, which would provide programming such as employment counseling that would ease his transition into the community as the end of his sentence approached.

Jill C. Tyson, chief public information officer for the agency, said in an email that, “the only inmates allowed to move without supervision are considered minimal risk.”

Stager, who is 5-foot-8 inches tall, 145 pounds, and has distinctive tattoos, has a history of drug abuse and a mental illness, the authorities said.

By Mrudula.