A nationwide hunt for a man sought in the disappearance of a Florida girl ended in Augusta on Thursday when deputies arrested John Evander Couey as he walked along Greene Street.

Richmond County Sheriff Ronnie Strength said Mr. Couey, 46, was taken into custody near the Salvation Army shelter.

"All indications are that he definitely was just passing through and heading to Tennessee," Sheriff Strength said. "He had no ties here at all."

Citrus County, Fla., authorities investigating the disappearance of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford from her home in Homosassa, Fla., 60 miles north of Tampa, had sought Mr. Couey in connection with the case. He also was sought for failure to register as a sex offender.

During an afternoon news conference, Sheriff Strength said Citrus County police had arrived and were questioning Mr. Couey.

He said any decision to extradite him to Florida would be made later.

According to Florida's Citrus County Sheriff's Office, detectives became interested in Mr. Couey while contacting registered sex offenders who lived near the missing girl's home.

Authorities said they discovered he was no longer living at his home when they tried to contact him Feb. 28, five days after Jessica disappeared.

He is identified as a "person of interest" but as of Thursday afternoon had not been charged with any crime related to the girl's disappearance.

Savannah police said they interviewed Mr. Couey on Saturday at a Salvation Army shelter but did not have grounds to hold him.

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Mr. Couey was convicted in the early 1990s of lewd and lascivious behavior with a child under age 16.

A woman who answered the phone Thursday afternoon at the Citrus County Sheriff's Office said that no information about the case was being released.

A worker at the Salvation Army had identified Mr. Couey from media reports, and the agency notified the sheriff's office at 8:30 a.m., Sheriff Strength said.

After 9:30 a.m., Mr. Couey was taken into custody, not far from the shelter near Enterprise Mill.

Maj. James Hall, of the Salvation Army on Greene Street, said he could neither confirm nor deny that Mr. Couey had been staying at the Salvation Army because of the agency's confidentiality policy. He said Salvation Army personnel check the names of all people staying at their lodges against a list of people wanted by the authorities. If there are matches, the police are notified.

William Cornell Clark, who is in a treatment program at the Salvation Army, said Mr. Couey had been staying at the Salvation Army for two days and that he had served him Thursday morning.

"One thing you do when you're serving - you don't forget who you serve."

Mr. Clark said Mr. Couey was "the quiet type" and didn't want to take his hat off, even though men are not allowed to wear hats inside the facility.

Fellow homeless people who stayed with Mr. Couey at the Salvation Army said he blended in at the shelter, saying little, always wearing his cap and giving no impression that he was on the run from the law. They said they assumed he was working somewhere during the day because he had specks of silver-white paint on his clothes. They also said he recently reeked of alcohol.

Shown a photo of Mr. Couey, Dennis Rickerson, 22, said the man told him he was from Florida and got stranded in Augusta after someone he was working for left him behind.

Mr. Rickerson recalled that Mr. Couey carried extra clothes in a plastic grocery bag and had a beard and long hair when he arrived at the shelter. He later came in clean-shaven with his hair cut, Mr. Rickerson said.

A 47-year-old man who would not give his name said Mr. Couey had been at the Salvation Army for a few days and smelled like beer on Wednesday.

"Pardon my French, but he just acted like an average white guy," the man said. "He just seemed to me like a little drunk."

Officials found that Mr. Couey had been in Augusta for two days before his arrest and attempted to leave Thursday for Tennessee, but Mr. Couey did not tell authorities where in Tennessee he was headed, the sheriff said.

He said Mr. Couey was cooperative with investigators and did not try to hide his identity from them.

According to sheriff's deputies, Mr. Couey gave the 900 block of Hull Street in Savannah as his home address. A government property records search system does not show the address as a valid location within Savannah or Chatham County.

The same handout shows that Mr. Couey had shaven his white mustache and goatee - which had appeared in wanted photos from Florida - by the time he got to the Richmond County jail.

According to the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, Mr. Couey's criminal history in Florida is lengthy, dating back to the 1970s.

He registered as a sex offender in the county in 1997 and failed to comply with registration requirements more than once.

Checks of the Georgia Department of Corrections and Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, as well as Richmond County court records dating back to 2001, reveal no charges in the Peach State.

Tennessee state prison and parole records reveal no charges in that state, either.

Staff Writers Johnny Edwards and Dena Levitz contributed to this report.

Reach Jeremy Craig at (706) 823-3409 or jeremy.craig@augustachronicle.com.