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After some six days on the run, escaped fugitive David Watson has been captured in Maryland. Watson, 28, was captured inside a 20-inch drainage pipe on Wednesday night after a short struggle.
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He escaped Maryland’s Clifton T. Perkins hospital last Friday when he allegedly shoved a guard to the ground and ran while being unloaded from a van at the facility. He has a record of violence targeting police officers, including attempted murder of Maryland police officers and a conviction on charges of firing a rifle into the house of another officer in Delaware in 2013. For the 2013 incident, he was sentenced to over 100 years in prison.
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Police have not determined how Watson escaped the handcuffs and waist chain that should have restrained him, but the Washington Post reports that an initial investigation found that he had no help in escaping.
The initial search focused on Jessup, Md., in the vicinity of the hospital. They called off the search on Saturday when they determined that there was no evidence he was still in the area.
Since Watson has ties to Delaware, police believed he may have returned to that state. Though they believed he’d escaped the area, police alerted local business owners to his escape — and that led to a tip phoned in just after 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday.
The tipster, who worked at one of the businesses in the area, reported seeing a suspicious man in dark pants, a hard hat and safety vest walking the railroad tracks walking in the area. After being spotted, he fled into a wooded area.
Shortly after, police received notice of a theft from a storage building nearby. Among the items taken were a safety vest and hard hat. That encouraged police to move in, launching another massive search involving multiple police agencies, helicopters and search dogs.
Watson is scheduled to be returned to Delaware today to live out the remainder of his sentence.
