Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal said fugitives are " in custody following car chase" in Tennessee; they were on the run since Tuesday
Two escaped Georgia inmates have been captured, according to a tweet from Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. They have been on the run since Tuesday after killing two guards on a prison bus in Georgia.
Gov. Deal’s tweet reads that the fugitives are « in custody following car chase » in Tennessee.
Ricky Dubose, 24, and Donnie Rowe, 43, were in Shelbyville, Tennessee, on Thursday morning, according to the FBI.
It was believed that Dubose and Rowe tied up a couple in Shelbyville and stole a black Jeep and guns, according to CBS affiliate WGCL-TV .
The station adds that police officials stopped a car they believed to be Dubose and Rowe on Interstate 24. The suspects fled from the car and captured, WGCL reported.
The inmates were being transported in a bus Tuesday morning when they allegedly overpowered two corrections officers on board, stealing their firearms and carjacking a green Honda Civic.
The incident set off a massive manhunt involving local, state and federal officers, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said.
Sills was emotional as he described the scene.
« I saw two brutally murdered corrections officers, that’s what I saw, » he said. « I have their blood on my shoes. »
Donnie Russell Rowe, serving life without parole, and Ricky Dubose, who has prominent tattoos on his face and neck, overpowered, disarmed and killed Sgt. Christopher Monica and Sgt. Curtis Billue and then carjacked a driver who happened to pull up behind the bus on a rural highway, Sills said.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation increased reward money on Wednesday for information leading to their capture.
Sills had described the fugitives this week as « dangerous beyond description. »
Monica and Billue were both transfer sergeants at Baldwin State Prison, according to The Associated Press. Monica had been with the Georgia Department of Corrections since October 2009 and Billue since July 2007.
How the two inmates managed to reach and overpower the guards remains under investigation, Sills said.
« They were inside the caged area of the bus, » he said. « How they got through the locks and things up to that area I do not know. »
Protocol is to have two armed corrections officers on the bus, but the officers don’t wear bullet-proof vests during transfers, Corrections Commissioner Greg Dozier said.
« We lost two of our fellow officers, two of our kin. We see our officers as our family, » Dozier said.
Monica was 42 and leaves behind a wife, Dozier said. Billue was 58 and is survived by his father, five sisters, two brothers and two sons, said Jim Green, an attorney who’s speaking for the Billue family.
