A California man stalked a former American Idol contestant, sending her threatening voice mail messages and showing up at her grandmother's Florida house uninvited, authorities said.
Daniel Robert Young, 59, was being held without bond Thursday after his arrest Tuesday at the home of Jessica Sierra's grandmother, police said.
Police said Young had placed at least 38 voice mail messages since mid-September telling Sierra, 20, that he loves her and is willing to go to jail for her, police said. He sent her a necklace, a bracelet and dozens of long-stemmed roses after seeing her singing on the Fox talent show, police said.
"It was like the more I stopped answering my phone and stopped talking to him, he got even more mad," Sierra said. "He was like, ‘Answer your damn phone when I call you.'"
Sierra, a Tampa native and one of the 10 finalists on American Idol last year, recently got an apartment in Nashville, Tenn. Young told police he recently bought a house in Gainesboro, Tenn., about 90 miles away, authorities said.
When he arrived in Tampa on Tuesday from California, Young called Sierra's cell phone twice and asked her to pick him up, police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.
"I told him, ‘I'm not coming to pick you up,'" Sierra said. "He said, ‘If you don't come pick me up, I'm taking a cab to your grandparents' house.'"
Sierra then alerted police, who met Young at the home, McElroy said.
Young was booked into jail Tuesday with bail set at $500 on the misdemeanor stalking charge, which is punishable by up to a year in prison.
But Wednesday, a judge revoked the bail after a prosecutor said Young had two prior arrests for violent crimes in California. It was not immediately known if Young had an attorney.
Young was charged with battery resulting in serious bodily injury in October and with assault with a firearm in 2001, the prosecutor said.
Details about those cases weren't available Thursday, so Young was being held until attorneys get more information, said Pam Bondi, a spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County state attorney.
Young's driver's license lists a post office box address in Pearblossom, Calif. Records show he has lived in San Bernardino, Pasadena and Little Rock, Calif.