Bainbridge, GA - Deputy's Patrol Car Stolen by Handcuffed Prisoner - Massive Manhunt - State Helicopter and K-9 Search
Deputies Hunt Teen After Escape
May, 12, 2007
A criminal suspect’s daring, improbable escape using a stolen police patrol
car had Sheriff’s deputies and other officers engaged in an intense manhunt
Friday afternoon.
Numerous officers descended upon rural southern Decatur County at about 1:40
p.m. Friday after a man arrested following a midday vehicle chase escaped by
climbing into the front of a deputy’s patrol car and driving away while his
hands were cuffed in front of him, according to Chief Deputy Sheriff Jim Morris.
At press time, deputies were searching for a man they identified as 18-year-old
Terrell Baker of Baker-Phillips Road, Fowlstown, in a rural neighborhood off
Georgia 309 South.
A helicopter from the Georgia State Patrol’s Aviation Unit in Albany, Ga.,
located the stolen patrol car, which Baker had abandoned in a corn field behind
Dowdell’s, a night club just south of the Fowlstown community. Deputy
Jason Williams and his search dog partner, “Bear,” were hunting Baker at press
time with the assistance of blood hounds from the Apalachee Correctional
Institute in Sneads, Fla. The search was centered around the Philyaw
subdivision, which includes Baker-Philips Road.
Baker was initially apprehended after noon Friday after Deputy Efrain Beltran
chased a vehicle occupied by Baker and a man tentatively identified as Michael
Ray Anderson, who was wanted by deputies for writing a bad check, Major Wendell
Cofer said. After Beltran stopped the car on Willis Lane south of Attapulgus,
Baker and Anderson attempted to rush the deputy. However he ordered them to the
ground at gunpoint, Cofer said. Anderson and Baker were placed in the back of
two patrol cars while deputies located plastic bags which the suspects had
thrown out of the car’s windows. Deputies recovered a “large amount” of
suspected marijuana as a result, Cofer said.
Anderson was transported to the Decatur County Jail, however Baker remained in
the rear of Lt. Rick Ashley’s patrol car while Ashley assisted a social worker
with children who had been riding in the suspects’ car, Cofer said. Because the
rear of patrol cars are not air-conditioned and Baker had complained of heat,
deputies had opened a small window in the Plexiglas barrier separating the front
and rear passenger areas to give the suspect air and a bottle of water, Morris
said.
Ashley had only been away from the patrol car for a minute or two when Baker
took off in the patrol car towards Georgia 309 South. Ashley alerted other
deputies, who swarmed southern Decatur County looking for the stolen patrol car.
Bainbridge Public Safety and police in counties adjacent to Decatur County were
notified. Gadsden County Sheriff’s deputies initially reported a possible
sighting of the suspect near Hinson, Fla., and search efforts were focused
around Georgia 302 South, a highway which breaks off Georgia 97 and goes into
Florida. Shortly before 4 p.m., GSP helicopter pilot Sgt. A.J. White and Sgt.
Marc Godby of the GSP’s Donalsonville post, who was riding in the helicopter,
spotted the patrol car in a large cornfield behind Dowdell’s, which also has
athletic fields and mobile homes near it.
At about 5:45 p.m., an employee of the Attapulgus Quick Buys convenience store
reported spotting Baker outside the store, however he left before employees
recognized him, according to E-911 radio communication.
Cofer said he planned to arrest a woman who claimed to be Baker’s sister, who
had come to the Sheriff’s Office after the manhunt began demanding Baker’s
confiscated cell phone. Deputy Brian Lewis refused to give it to her, causing
the woman to exclaim that she knew where Baker was but wasn’t telling. The woman
then fled from the Sheriff’s Office, according to Cofer. Baker’s mother and
other family live in Quincy, Fla., and were contacted about Baker’s whereabouts,
although he was believed to be hiding near his home on Baker-Phillips Road,
Cofer said.
Baker, whose image was captured on a video camera mounted in another deputy’s
patrol car, was wearing a white tanktop shirt, white knee-length shorts, white
tennis shoes and a black do-rag at the time of his escape. He was also wearing
two large diamond earrings and a necklace, Deputy Beltran said. Anyone with
information about Baker’s whereabouts is asked to call 911.