Schenectady parolee held on child endangerment count

A city parolee is in the Schenectady County Jail on accusations he lured a child into a vacant property in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood, authorities said.

The child was unharmed. The boy’s father had been alerted that his son left with a man on a promise of toys, said the boy’s mother, Jessica Hotaling. His father began yelling for the boy, who came running to him.

Arrested was William Lindley, 26, most recently of Richard Street. He faces one count of endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor. He is also on parole supervision in a 2008 attempted robbery case that involved a co-defendant and a stabbing. He is being held without bail on parole violation.

The alleged incident happened Aug. 23 in Woodlawn just after 11 a.m.

Jessica Hotaling on Monday said her 8-year-old son, Joseph, was in the front yard with a neighbor playing. Lindley allegedly approached claiming he was moving and had toys to give. He also claimed to be friends of a neighbor.

Both children followed, Jessica Hotaling said. The neighbor girl, however, soon got nervous and ran home. She alerted her parents, who alerted the Hotalings. They called 911 and her husband, Benjamin, went out looking for Joseph.

“My husband ended up somewhat near the house screaming for him,” Jessica Hotaling said. “He heard his father calling. The man was in the other room on the telephone and Joseph ran out of the house.”

Police investigated and Lindley was formally charged Aug. 25 with the misdemeanor endangerment and parole violation counts.

He is accused of endangering the child by asking the boy, who was not known to him, to accompany him inside a vacant property on McDonald Avenue. Lindley had once lived in the property, but had been evicted, according to papers filed in court.

Inside the building, according to papers, Lindley “displayed a throwing knife and did stick the knife into a dresser.”

Hotaling said she’s spoken to her son about strangers. She said she has anxiety attacks thinking about what could have happened.

“This has always been my biggest fear,” she said. “It’s difficult. I am scared to let my kids play outside.”

She also questioned how it’s not a more serious crime for a stranger to get a child to go with him under false pretenses.

Lindley was on parole for a June 2008 attempted robbery on the bike path near Schenectady County Community College that he committed with a co-defendant. A jogger was stabbed. Lindley claimed it was his co-defendant who stabbed the jogger, telling a judge that he’d been molested at knife-point as a child and hadn’t been able to hold a knife since. The jogger recovered, giving a detailed statement at Lindley’s sentencing.

Lindley pleaded guilty to first-degree attempted robbery in that case and was sentenced to six years in prison and five years of post-release supervision. His co-defendant remains in prison on the attempted robbery plea and an unrelated conviction.