After the judge dismissed his aggravated statutory rape charge, Charles David Pugh walked out of the courtroom and out of the building without looking back once.
Pugh was accused of molesting a 16-year-old boy while he was an employee at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in 2010.
On Monday, Hamilton County Sessions Judge Clarence Shattuck dismissed the case after determining that prosecutors did not prove the incident happened within the state’s four-year statute of limitations.
“There is no question in this court’s mind this event occurred,” Shattuck said. “But because of the statute of limitations in the state of Tennessee for this event, it is not clear to this court that it happened after Oct. 31.”
Documents show Pugh is suspected of raping as many as eight boys over the course of several years while working at the museum, but in at least three of the cases, the four-year statute of limitations had expired and Pugh could not be prosecuted.