Lance Gouvan said he wants to pick up where he left off and continue helping people worse off than he is.
NORTHAMPTON — Charges against Lance M. Gouvan, a homeless man accused with his girlfriend of accosting a 9-year-old girl and tying her to a tree, are to be dropped Thursday in Northampton District Court, officials said Wednesday.
In a July 19, 2012, incident, Gouvan and Megan Bonny were charged with attempted murder, kidnapping a child, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and two counts of assault and battery in connection with an alleged attack on the girl, who was a student at Cutchins Programs for Children and Families on Pomeroy Terrace.
Prosecutors soon dropped the kidnapping and attempted murder charges, but the rest remained. On Thursday the state will drop all charges against Gouvan, 35, in District Court, according to the court clerk’s office.
The court had no files late Wednesday about plans to drop charges against Bonny, 27.
The 9-year-old, whom neither the police nor the program has identified, said she was skipping rope on a field at the facility where Cutchins operates its New Directions school when a man and woman came out of the woods and accosted her.
According to the girl, Gouvan dragged her to a tree at Bonny's direction, and tied one end of the rope around her neck and the other to the tree.
“I was doing really good” before the arrest, Gouvan said Wednesday. He said he had been organizing homeless people to clean up the homeless camps. “I got my name ruined."
“Because of this case, the positive things I was doing in Northampton were taken down. I need my name to be cleared to go back to the way it was," he said.
He said and Bonny were homeless and living in a camp near the Cutchins Programs where the girl lived.
The girl told police that Gouvan had shouted obscenities at her through an orange traffic cone as he and Bonny walked across the field. Then, at Bonny's direction, Gouvan grabbed her by the hair and tied her to the tree, she said.
Gouvan said they didn’t go near the girl but did pick up the cone and yell.
The hearing is slated for 9:15 a.m. Thursday in Northampton District Court.