A Springfield area mail carrier is in the Greene County Jail, accused in the sexual assault of an elderly woman on his delivery route.
Mark Poag, 59, was charged with first-degree sodomy or attempted sodomy in the incident. A warrant is out for his arrest and as of Monday night he had not yet been brought into custody.
According to the probable cause statement, Poag had been delivering the victim’s mail and had interacted with her on multiple occasions prior to the incident. Then the victim’s doctor wrote a note asking for her mail to be brought to her door rather than forcing her to walk to a mailbox along the street.
The victim then began allowing Poag to enter through her garage door to deliver the mail. On the day of the assault, Poag took off his boots to enter the home and deliver the mail because of snow and slush on the ground. The victim thought Poag was leaving her home to put his boots back on and leave, so the victim went to her bedroom. Poag allegedly followed and attacked the victim in her bedroom.
Springfield police investigators worked with the USPS Postal Inspector to track Poag’s movements through GPS. On the day of the assault, Poag was at the victim’s residence for 18 minutes, which a postal inspector told police there was no reason for a mailman to be at a residence that long.
The victim says they’re now afraid to stay in the home where they lived for 20 years and moved to avoid the possibility Poag would show at her home. Poag had also mentioned a concert the victim planned to attend in August and the victim is worried he would show up at that event to confront her.
OI reached out to the U.S. Postal Service for comment and Postal Inspector Paul Shade said he could not directly comment because of the Privacy Act, but that standard procedure for the USPS in these situations is to place the employee on a “non-duty status pending the outcome [of] an investigation.”
He noted that the Postal Inspection Service and the Springfield PD were conducting a joint investigation.
If convicted of the charge, Poag could face life in prison.