This Guy Broke Out of Jail, Got Caught, Then Stole a Cop Car and Escaped Again
Credit to Author: River Donaghey| Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 19:20:46 +0000
Police in Missouri have launched a massive, statewide manhunt for a dangerous inmate who somehow managed to escape their grasp twice in one week—including while he was handcuffed in the back of a goddamn cop car, the Washington Post reports.
According to a probable cause statement from the Pettis County Sheriff’s Office, 30-year-old Travis Lee Davis broke out of his cell in the county jail Sunday night by crawling into the ceiling and shimmying across the rafters, Die Hard-style, until he could squeeze through a tiny hole into an employee closet. From there, he was bafflingly able to walk right out of the jail doors and disappear into the night.
Davis, who’s facing charges of kidnapping and domestic assault, is considered dangerous, and police raced to track him down and figure out how he managed to pull off his batshit escape in the first place. But he managed to elude cops for days, until a terrified woman called 911 from an Oklahoma gas station on Wednesday with disturbing news: She had just been kidnapped, and the man fit Davis’s description.
“Officers made contact with the woman, who stated that she had been kidnapped and forced to drive at gunpoint,” local police chief Ty Armstrong told the Heavener Ledger. “She said when they stopped at the gas station, her kidnapper fell asleep and she fled the car to get help.”
Police reportedly raced to the scene and arrested Davis. They cuffed him and put him in the back of their car, presumably patting each other on the back and muttering variations of “good-ass job, everybody,” until they looked over and realized that, uh, both the prisoner and the cop car were gone.
“He somehow got the cuffs to the front of him and somehow managed to get through the window in the partition while my guys were interviewing the victim,” Armstrong told the Sedalia Democrat. “He went through the window, stole the car and went approximately two miles and crashed, then fled on foot.”
Armstrong said that Davis may have “escaped the area by trespassing on a freight train,” but still warned people in the Heavener, Oklahoma, area to “keep their doors locked and be watchful for strangers.”
And just to make the unbelievable saga of this Houdini fugitive even weirder, the woman who claimed she had been kidnapped by Davis reportedly might actually be his girlfriend, who allegedly helped him escape—and, for some reason, she had been playing slots at the rest stop before calling the police. Who the fuck knows what is going on! In any case, Davis is still on the loose, and police have described him as dangerous.
As you can see in his mugshot, Davis has a very prominent Illuminati tattoo on his throat, though it’s unclear if that means that he’s a member of the secret cabal or just has very, very shitty taste. So if you spot a sketchy dude with a triangle eye neck tattoo or an awkward scarf that he refuses to take off, keep your distance and call the cops. Hopefully, they’ll catch him, and figure out a way to actually keep him in custody this time.
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This article originally appeared on VICE US.