‘Don’t scream’: A San Lorenzo woman woke up to a sex offender holding her down, police say
SAN LORENZO — It was around 6 a.m. on March 14 when a woman living on Santa Ana Street awoke to the force of a man’s body on top of her, according to police.
“Don’t scream,” he allegedly told her, but the shock of the situation made her instinctively cry out.
“I told you not to scream,” the man told her before attempting to cover her mouth. “I just want a few dollars.”
The commotion awakened the victim’s mother, who rushed in, causing the suspect to burst out of the home and flee, authorities said. Now the Alameda County Sheriff’s office says it has figured out who the intruder was: a convicted sex offender who was wearing a GPS ankle monitor that showed him inside the home at the time of the incident.
The suspect, identified in court papers as 40-year-old Tommy Henderson, has now been charged with first degree residential burglary, a felony. Court hearings say the incident was the final straw in what parole officials described as an “acutely poor” performance since being released from prison in 2023 for molesting a girl younger than 14.
In fact, Henderson was arrested at the Eastmont Mall in Oakland on March 26, one day after attending a sex offender treatment group program where he was asked to stay after class due to disruptive behavior, according to court records. During the March 25 session, he allegedly feigned sleep, took off his shoes despite being asked not to, and loudly objected to being told he couldn’t leave to use the restroom, demanding to know whether the clinician was capable of going long periods of time without urinating, as he was being asked to do.
In Henderson’s underlying offense, he was convicted of sexually abusing a girl whose home he had stayed at in the late 2010s. The victim told police sometimes she’d awaken in the middle of the night to find Henderson standing over her, and that the abuse would follow.
In the March 14 incident, Henderson allegedly climbed on top of the sleeping woman, held her down for about 30 seconds, then attempted to cover her mouth with his hands when she cried out. He allegedly asked the woman for money, touched several items in the room and left a beanie behind, according to court records.
On March 30, Judge Thomas Reardon denied a defense motion to release Henderson without bail. Henderson remains jailed in lieu of $125,000 bail, with his next court date set for April 30, court records show. He has pleaded not guilty.
