OGDEN — An Ogden man has pleaded guilty to trying to kidnap an 11-year-old girl from a school playground last year.

“I tried to take a girl from school who I thought looked like my daughter, but she was not,” Ira Cox-Berry, 42, said in a plea bargain document signed June 16. “I took her by the arm, but I was thankfully stopped by a school monitor.”

About 20 children were nearby on the Lincoln Elementary School playground on May 25, 2021, when Cox-Berry grabbed the girl, prompting a school employee to challenge him, retrieve the girl and usher the children inside, charging documents said.

After Cox-Berry punched a school window, a different school employee emerged with a handgun to confront Cox-Berry. Police arrived and arrested Cox-Berry after a struggle.

Police said Cox-Berry appeared to be intoxicated by narcotics and that the girl involved and Cox-Berry did not know one another.

A plea bargain reached by the Weber County Attorney’s Office and defense attorney Roy Cole said they agreed to argue before 2nd District Judge Camille Neider the question of whether Cox-Berry could serve jail time rather than be sent to prison.

State law for the offense, first-degree felony attempted child kidnapping, calls for a sentence of three years to life in prison, but prison time is not mandatory — judges have discretion to suspend a prison sentence and order jail time.

In either case, the conviction requires that Cox-Berry must have a lifetime entry on the state’s child kidnapping and sex offense registry.

Cox-Berry, who has been held at the Weber County Jail since his arrest, is scheduled to be sentenced on. Aug. 1.

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