DEL.ICIO.USUpdated: 1:23 p.m. March 04, 2009
‘Little Houdini’ still on the loose after Kennesaw escape
KSU police closed school even though Gay was never seen on campus
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Christopher Gay, known as ‘Little Houdini,’ was never spotted on the Kennesaw State University campus Tuesday but the college was still shut down for most of the day because the notorious fugitive was spotted headed in that direction, police said Wednesday.
Cobb County Police Department spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce said little has changed in the search for Gay, at least from a “local standpoint,” but the case is “like any fugitive on the run” where area law enforcement agencies are on the lookout for him.
Bob Andres/bandres@ajc.com
Police search vehicles entering or leaving the Kennesaw State University campus, including cars on Frey Road (above) Tuesday.
Cobb County Police
Christopher Daniel Gay slipped his shackles and escaped when a deputy stopped at a Kennesaw Waffle House.
“I don’t think they are excluding any idea,” Pierce said. “If I would escape from a vehicle, I would be far away.”
Gay slipped out of his restraints at the Kennesaw Waffle House on Frey Road across from the campus. The 34-year-old career thief bolted from the backseat when the Coffee County, Tenn., sheriff’s deputy opened the door so they could get something to eat. Gay’s restraints were left on the backseat.
Police almost immediately shut down the campus Tuesday afternoon but classes resumed Wednesday morning. Police don’t know if Gay is still in the area but they do not think he is dangerous.
He’s stolen both a Wal-Mart big rig and the tour bus of Nashville music Crystal Gayle, police say. Grammy winner Tim O’Brien penned “The Ballad of Christopher Daniel Gay” about him.
He is described as a 5-foot-5, white male weighing 140 pounds. Cobb County police said he has short black hair, a goatee and tattoos on both arms. Gay was last seen wearing a white T-shirt and black pants.
The deputy from Tennessee, Capt. Donnie Thomas, a 40-year veteran, had stopped at the restaurant for a meal and restroom stop during the trip from Orlando, where Gay was recently arrested, back to Manchester, Tenn.
“When he opened the door, [Gay] bolted,” said Coffee County Sheriff Steven Graves. “We’re thinking he had a key. The chains were all undone and laying on the floor board.”
What followed was a three-hour search of a locked-down KSU campus.
“This is the same story,” said Michael Douglas, police chief of Pleasant View, Tenn., who’s familiar with Gay’s history. “That’s how he got away before.”
Gay’s most notorious escapade began as an effort to visit his dying mother.
Being transported in January 2007 to face charges in Alabama for allegedly stealing an RV, Gay slipped away from a pair of policemen at a rest stop in South Carolina, Douglas said.
Then, Gay stole a pickup truck and drove it nearly 300 miles northwest to Manchester. In Manchester, Gay allegedly took a Wal-Mart tractor trailer loaded with thousands of dollars of merchandise and drove to Pleasant View, about 30 miles northwest of Nashville.
“Police get into pursuit with him and chase him into Pleasant View,” Douglas said. “He runs the truck into his mother’s front yard, then runs into the woods.”
News reports — and O’Brien’s song, which was inspired by the event — say Gay was trying to visit his mother, Anna Shull, who was dying of cancer. The song, sang to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd” mentions the moment:
“Stole a pickup in Carolina, then a Wal-Mart truck with eighteen wheels. He drove toward his dyin’ mama in the Cheatham County hills. And it’s down those lanes and back roads the police made their chase. And he almost made her trailer, he almost saw her face.”
Gay’s mother died weeks later of cancer, on Feb. 7, 2007, according to the Associated Press.
“I just knew there was a song in there,” O’Brien said on acousticguitarforum.com. “Chris Gay’s mother even rhymed for a reporter saying, ‘What he done was wrong, but he knows his mama don’t have long’.”
After escaping authorities in Pleasant View, Douglas said, Gay made his way to Nashville and made off with the Cyrstal Gayle tour bus.
“He drove it to Florida to a NASCAR race,” Douglas said.
According to the Palm Beach Post, Gay told the manager of a Lakeland, Fla., racetrack that he was there to pick up driver Tony Stewart, but it was discovered that he was driving Gayle’s stolen bus. Douglas said Tennessee authorities had been tracking Gay since 2006 for stealing heavy trucks and tractors.
“He started with us, stealing a tractor in Pleasant View,” Douglas said. “He’s stolen almost $1 million of construction equipment across Tennessee.”
Florida authorities arrested him a few days ago after discovering he was wanted in Tennessee.
Back in Tennessee, Sheriff Graves said he wouldn’t be caught off guard again.
“I guess we’ll do a criminal background check the next time we pick up a prisoner,” he said.
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