Two inmates who escaped the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, apparently last Friday, made it almost 130 miles and to another state before being captured.
There’s no telling how far David May and Dillon Williams would have made it had local residents around the Parchman area not convinced officials at the prison they were missing the two inmates.
It all started around 2 p.m. when a property owner in the area near the prison discovered a 4-wheeler missing.
The E-T spoke to an individual who assisted the man in tracking down the ATV, but he asked not to be named in this article.
The man said they were able to follow the tracks of the 4-wheeler up to a point, because the inmates were apparently cutting across muddy fields. When they made it to a paved road, they lost the trail.
The men talked to a resident about a mile from Shelby, which is about 17 miles west of Parchman, as the crow flies.
The man said he had seen two men on a 4-wheeler.
“He said we were about 30 minutes behind them,” the witness told The E-T.
By this time, it was getting later in the day.
“We met a deputy along the way, and we exchanged numbers with him,” the witness said.
It was getting dark, and they were about to give up on the search when a deputy called them.
“When we got to a loss and nowhere to go, he called us, and somebody had reported a 4-wheeler at a farm shop, and it just so happened we were within a mile of that farm shop,” he said. “We rode over there, and there it was. The bike was there, and they had left a Honda and took a truck.”
Also, at the shop were articles of clothing that appeared to have been worn by an inmate. There was a jacket with Mississippi Department of Corrections on it, and there was a bloody shirt, he said.
“There wasn’t no doubt,” he said. “I knew we had an inmate out.”
The witness said the 4-wheeler was processed and then returned to the owner that evening.
Later that night, Rickey Williamson, who has lived just a stone’s throw away from the prison for over two decades, was getting calls for the second straight day warning him that inmates might be on the loose.
“I had several phone calls from people telling me to lock my doors, not from Parchman, but from people in the community and that there may be some escaped inmates,” Williamson told The E-T during a phone interview this week.
He said he called some people he knew inside the gates, on Thursday and Friday, and they assured him each day that no one was missing.
On Friday, however, Williamson had received a game cam photo of what appeared to be an inmate that was taken at 11:45 a.m. on Friday, and he had also received pictures of the bloody clothes left with the 4-wheeler.
“Parchman is saying they do not have an inmate out, but I’ve got a picture of an inmate on the game camera,” Williamson said.
Williamson said he called Parchman again.
“I said, ‘Y’all have one positive inmate missing, and most likely two,’” he said.
The Parchman official again contradicted this.
“He said, ‘No, we’re good. Everybody’s here,’” Williamson said. “I sent him a picture of the inmate and I sent him the picture of the clothes, and I called him back. I said, ‘You’re going to tell me you don’t have two convicts missing? What was this on this picture?’”
At that point, Williamson said the individual at Parchman acknowledged the person in the photo was most likely an inmate.
By this time, May and Williams had apparently changed clothes and vehicles and had a good head start on authorities who were still conducting a headcount at the prison after 9 p.m. on Friday.
Just before 5 a.m. on Saturday, MDOC released a statement confirming the two were gone, saying they were discovered missing at 1:45 a.m. on Saturday.
May was eventually captured in Tennessee on Sunday morning, and the pickup truck taken from Shelby was recovered at that point.
On Monday afternoon, shortly after Mississippi Crime Stoppers offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to his capture, Williams was arrested in a wooded area just east of Collierville, Tenn.
Both men will face charges in the escape and thefts that followed.
MDOC has said in statements that it is currently investigating how the two inmates were able to escape.
