Playing games with police is Shannon Norwood’s Robin Hood-like trademark, but Sunflower County Sheriff James Haywood said the escapee’s vanity caught up with him Friday.

A host of law enforcement officers did, too.

After nearly two days on the run, Norwood’s latest escapade ended in a field south of Inverness. He walked into the hands of Sunflower County deputies, who were searching along with counterparts from Leflore and Humphreys counties, the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, the Mississippi Department of Corrections, the state Highway Patrol and the Inverness Police Department.

The lawmen made sure Norwood didn’t slip through their fingers again.

“He went straight to Unit 32 at Parchman,” Haywood said. “That was my only insistence.”

Norwood, a 27-year-old from Greenwood, dodged law enforcement while they searched for him in connection with a series of car thefts. After stealing a Greenwood Police car, abandoning it, shedding his clothes and swimming the Yazoo River, four fishermen spotted Norwood and turned him in to deputies. After a roll down an embankment, they brought him in completely naked.

He was serving a four-year sentence for three counts of grand larceny at the Washington County Community Work Center. However, Norwood didn’t show up in a bed check around 1 a.m. Thursday, according to an MDOC press release.

Friday morning, a business owner in Greenville reported seeing Norwood speed off in his truck, despite efforts to catch him by a nearby 40-person search party, according to reports by the Delta Democrat Times.

A state trooper spotted him around 9 a.m. Friday south of Inverness and pursued the stolen truck, Haywood said.

Norwood turned off onto an unfamiliar, dead-end rural road and wrecked into some catfish ponds, the sheriff said.

A team of officers then closed in on Norwood.

“We kept him pinned down, but he was very elusive,” Haywood said. “It just so happened that a lady saw something out there passing by, and she made mention of it.”

A couple driving down Four Mile Road then saw Norwood, too, and Sunflower County deputies captured him at about 6:15 p.m. Friday. Haywood said they happened to be the ones nearest by and that all the agencies worked together to find Norwood.

“Everybody did a great job,” he said.

This time, Norwood was shirtless but wearing a pair of pants, the sheriff reported.

He faces up to five additional years in the state penitentiary if convicted of escape.
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