By Steve Stone
The Virginian-Pilot
NORFOLK, Va. — A North Carolina jail escapee, who was being held on three charges of vehicle theft, was captured without incident Sunday morning, asleep at the wheel of a stolen pickup.
Brandon Maurice Blount, 21, was arrested about 10:30 a.m. when Chesapeake police went to a residence on Pine Wood Court, said Peter Rascoe, a spokesman for the Chowan County, N.C., Sheriff’s Department.
test test |
Chowan authorities had asked their Virginia counterparts to check out the address because Blount was arrested there in January on a vehicle theft charge.
Blount had been arrested Friday in Chowan County on three counts of larceny of a motor vehicle and was being held at the county jail in downtown Edenton in lieu of $100,000 bond.
He was discovered missing from the county jail about 3 p.m. Saturday.
Despite a wide-ranging search by members of local, county and state law enforcement, some with K-9 dogs, Blount initially eluded capture.
He was spotted by a resident Saturday night dashing down Shannon House Road, Rascoe said.
“He had ditched the orange jumpsuit” all inmates are issued at the jail, Rascoe said. “He was running in boxers and a T-shirt.”
On Sunday morning, a report came in that a red pickup had been stolen from a residence on Haughton Road in Chowan County.
“Right when we got the call, Sheriff (Dwayne) Goodwin had gotten a hunch that possibly Blount might be seeking to run to Chesapeake,” Rascoe said. “He contacted the Chesapeake police himself and asked them to go by that residence.”
He also told them of the stolen vehicle.
Police went to the address, just off U.S. 17 near the interchange of Interstates 64 and 464. When they arrived, “there was a red pickup sitting there,” Rascoe said.
Officers approached it carefully, looked inside and found Blount spread across the seat, asleep .
“He was still in the same boxers and T-shirt he’d been seen in late Saturday,” Rascoe said.
Blount is being held in the Chesapeake City J ail without bond on charges of being in possession of a stolen vehicle. He faces an extradition hearing to begin the process of returning him to North Carolina.
Rascoe said Blount also faces new charges in North Carolina of felony larceny of a motor vehicle and escape from a local detention facility.
How he escaped is under investigation by the Chowan County Sheriff’s Office.
Copyright 2008 Landmark Communications, Inc.