A convicted metal thief who made a break for freedom will now spend more time in prison, and his girlfriend and brother will likely be close by.
24-year old David Gilbert was captured 36 hours after sneaking off a work detail near Baconton. Gilbert thought that he had a great plan of action to elude the officers chasing him. But he soon found out that the police had a better plan of action-- one that made sure that he didn't get away.
Bradley Lane in northern Mitchell County was a bee hive of activity on Tuesday.
"We were at an operation in the Baconton area, cutting bushes on the side of the road. Detail officers turned around and the guy ran, ran right into the bushes," said Mitchell Correctional Institute Bruce Shiver.
Immediately law enforcement sprang into action. "We contacted the sheriff's department, contacted the C. I., contacted the K-9 unit at the C. I. We immediately loaded up and went into that area," Shiver said.
The search was on both on the ground and in the air. But after several hours of looking Gilbert's trail went cold. That's when the investigative work started.
"We went to do some interviews with different people. Interview the inmates that were in with him. What they knew or what he had said," Mitchell Co. Sheriff W. E. Bozeman said.
Eventually investigators from several counties helped in the search. They discovered that Gilbert had help from two others; his girlfriend Alatha Kinder and his brother Tommy Gilbert.
They also figured out that he had fled to Miller County. Last night they found their man.
"There was probably a three to four hundred acre peanut patch with a drainage ditch with weeds as high as this building, you couldn't see. The dogs went right into that area and went right to him. He was buried up under some brush," said Shiver.
Bozeman said running was a bad decision for Gilbert. "He probably turned 12 months into 72 months."
And helping him was a bad idea for his brother and girlfriend. "There's consequences for their actions," Bozeman said.
Now Gilbert faces that extra time behind barbed wire in a state prison, proving that while an escapee can run, it's hard to hide from the long arm of the law.
Despite this escape, Warden Shiver and Sheriff Bozeman say they don't plan to cut back the work detail program. The sheriff says prisoners do a lot of work keeping up the rights of way along the roads and in the county machine shop.
Bother Kinder and Tommy Gilbert are in the Mitchell County Correctional Institute, facing charges of aiding and abetting.
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Warden Shiver
Sheriff Bozeman
24-year-old David Gilbert was captured 36 hours after sneaking off
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