SEATTLE — A convicted sex offender wanted by law enforcement ever since he cut off his court-ordered monitoring device a month ago in Port Angeles has been arrested in Seattle.

U.S. Marshal’s Service officers arrested Philip Curtis Shelly, 52, Friday afternoon in downtown Seattle after getting a request for help in finding Shelly from the Port Angeles Police Department and the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office.

Shelly was booked into King County Jail.

A Department of Corrections warrant for his arrest was issued after he cut off his monitoring bracelet in Port Angeles Feb. 1 and dropped it in a downtown mailbox.

Shelly pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of first-degree rape of a child, a 3-year-old in Clallam County, and was released in 2009.

A joint fugitive search operation in Clallam and Jefferson counties in mid-February failed to find Shelly.

A joint police-sheriff’s statement said that Port Angeles police officers last week received information that

Shelly was in downtown Seattle, and he became the subject of a hunt by the Marshal’s Service’s Pacific Northwest Fugitive Task Force.

Authorities said Shelly had been living in King County long enough without registering as a sex offender with the King County Sheriff’s Office that he could face a fresh charge of failing to register as a sex offender.

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s office will defer filing new charges against Shelly so he can be returned to Clallam County.

Gerald Brown, a Department of Corrections community corrections officer based in Port Angeles, said Shelly’s failure to comply with his monitoring requirements by cutting off his tracking bracelet was the most recent in a string of similar violations.

In August last year, Shelly was arrested by Pacific County sheriff’s deputies after corrections officer found he had worked at the Clallam County Fair in Port Angeles and was on his way to work at the Pacific County Fair in South Bend.

In an interview then, Brown said Shelly was required by law to stay away from where children tend to congregate, which would include fairs.

Before the August arrest, Shelly pleaded guilty to failing to register as a sex offender in April 2012 and June 2010, both in Clallam County.

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Reporter Jeremy Schwartz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jschwartz@peninsuladailynews.com.