Volusia County

Sex offender, 85, accused of offering woman $100K for her daughter, 8, at grocery store

PORT ORANGE, Fla. — An 85-year-old man, who is a registered sex offender, is accused of offering a woman $100,000 to buy her young daughter.

According to a Port Orange police report, the woman was shopping at a Winn-Dixie with her 8-year-old daughter on Aug. 16 when Hellmuth Kolb, 85, approached the pair and said the young girl was pretty and that he liked her dancing.

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The woman told police that when she left the store, Kolb yelled at her across the parking lot, asking to buy her daughter for $100,000.

It’s not the first time he has been accused of offering to buy a child at a grocery store. In 2018, Kolb was arrested after police said he was accused of attempting to buy an 8-year-old girl from her mother for $200,000 at a Walmart.

Read: Man tried to buy woman’s 8-year-old daughter at Walmart, police say

In that case, he was given five years of probation and ordered to stay away from children outside of his family. Kolb’s attorney filed a motion earlier this month to have Kolb’s probation revoked, stating that Kolb possibly had dementia and that he had complied with his probation requirements so far.

At the Winn-Dixie, police said when they asked Kolb, he admitted that he asked to buy the young girl before starting to laugh.

Read: Mar-a-Lago search: Redacted affidavit released

Officers said they escorted Kolb to his car to wait until his wife was done shopping. An officer said in the police report that he then contacted Kolb’s probation officer to let them know about the incident.

Kolb was arrested on Thursday, more than a week after the Winn-Dixie incident, on charges of violating his probation.

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Sarah Wilson

Sarah Wilson, WFTV.com

Sarah Wilson joined WFTV Channel 9 in 2018 as a digital producer after working as an award-winning newspaper reporter for nearly a decade in various communities across Central Florida.