Abuse suspect found hiding under house

A Carson City felon who served time for sexual assault and drunken driving was found hiding under a house that the sheriff's SWAT team had surrounded for hours the night before.

Paul Morowski, 37, a machinist from Carson City, was booked into the Carson City Jail on suspicion of gross misdemeanor child abuse, false imprisonment and misdemeanor domestic battery.

According to Sheriff's Chief Deputy Steve Schuette, officers were called out to Morowski's Sherman Lane home about 10:20 p.m. Sunday night after his adult stepdaughter reported he'd picked her up by her neck while she held her 18-month-old son.

When police arrived, the girl was outside of the home and told police that Morowski was still inside.

For more than four hours, deputies with the sheriff's special weapons and tactics team surrounded the home and evacuated three nearby mobile homes before making entry and discovering that Morowski was not inside.

The stepdaughter and Morowski's wife stayed the night with friends.

On Monday morning, when the women wanted to return to the property with a moving truck and get their things, they called the Sheriff's Department and asked that deputies clear the property.

Schuette said officers cleared the house, but as Deputy Wayne Wheeler and Rick Dodds walked to the rear of the home, they noticed "two drag marks" going under a deck.

The men looked underneath the deck and could see that someone had pulled himself under the house and was hiding beneath some plastic, said Schuette. Morowski was arrested without incident.

Schuette said Morowski denied hurting his stepdaughter. "He said he wasn't strangling her, but that he lifted her off the ground by her head. He didn't mean to hurt her; he just did that to make a point."

Morowski told deputies he'd spent the night in a casino, returned to the home Monday morning, and when he saw the moving truck, he hid under the house, said Schuette.

Morowski was convicted in 1991 of sexual assault in San Mateo, Calif. He is at the Sherman Lane address as a Tier 2 sex offender in Nevada. He also spent time in prison for drunken driving, according to Nevada Department of Corrections records.

Morowski is being held on $13,396 bail.

• Contact reporter F.T. Norton at ftnorton@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1213.