The man accused of dressing as a woman and attacking a real estate agent in Lawrenceville has done it before, according to court records.
Channel 2 Action News discovered documents that outline the man’s unusual pattern of harassing real estate agents in at least two other Georgia counties.
Jeffrey Wayne Shumate, 38, was arrested on Wednesday after investigators say he attacked a real estate agent outside a Lawrenceville home. Police say Shumate was dressed as a woman, with a wig, when the attack happened on the front porch of the vacant home on Sugarloaf Parkway.
“My heart just stopped,” said Alicia Parks about the moment she saw Shumate’s mugshot on WSB-TV on Wednesday.
Parks says she will never forget when she met Shumate in 2001. Parks say he came to see a house she was showing, which was also vacant.
“He had on black leather gloves that came to his wrist, hot pink lipstick, white high heel shoes and black stockings,” Parks said. “He grabbed my hand and kissed it. He said I was his girlfriend.”
Parks says what she did next, at the alarm box, may have saved her.
“When I went to the box to turn it off he was breathing down on me, and instead of turning it off I set it off,” Parks said, adding that the man ran away before police could get there.
The next day, according to records obtained by Channel 2 Action News, he ended up in Jackson County. Investigators with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office say that day in 2001 he also dressed in lipstick and high heels and attacked another real estate agent from that area.
Shumate pleaded guilty to simple battery and terroristic threats for this incident, according to court records. In 2002, he was sentenced to three years confinement and probation.
In 2011, when he was out of prison, Shumate allegedly had another encounter with a real estate agent in Fannin County.
He was found guilty of two counts of making terroristic threats by threatening to rape and sodomize a real estate agent from Fannin County. The victim told Channel 2 Action News that Shumate called him to inquire about a “secluded home” that her agency was listing. She says she never met him in person, but he made the threats over the phone.
Shumate was sentenced to five years to serve and probation for this crime. According to records with the Georgia Department of Correction, he was released from prison on this charge in September 2014. The most recent alleged incident happened on Wednesday.
No charges were ever filed in Parks’ case, but she says she uses it as a lesson to tell her new agents.
“Please don’t run out and show a house, especially a vacant house, alone to someone who you have no idea who it is,” Parks said. She said no sale is worth putting your safety at risk.
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