Gay’s exploits are the stuff of a country song

Editor’s note: The following AP story on the exploits of Christopher Daniel Gay was published on Jan. 30, 2007.

It has all the makings of a country song: an escaped prisoner, his terminally ill mother, a Wal-Mart truck, NASCAR and a Nashville singer’s tour bus.

Since Christopher Daniel Gay, 32, escaped from a prisoner transport van Sunday, police say he has evaded a five-state manhunt by stealing a pickup, a big rig and the bus that belongs to singer Crystal Gayle. No one has been reported injured during his time on the lam, and the search for him continued Friday.

Initially, police say, his motive for fleeing was simple.

“I take it he was just trying to see his mom,” said Michael Douglas, the police chief in Pleasant View, Tenn., near the home where Gay’s mother is dying of cancer.

The most recent sighting of Gay — described as white, 5-foot-7 and 145 pounds with tattoos on both arms — was in Florida.

A man believed to be Gay arrived Thursday night at USA International Speedway in Lakeland, Fla., telling the manager there he was with Joe Gibbs Racing, a team which boasts NASCAR racer Tony Stewart among its drivers.

USA International Speedway is hosting the SPEEDFEST 2007 event this week, but there are no plans for Stewart to appear.

“We obviously weren’t expecting him,” USA International Speedway President Bill Martino said in a phone interview Friday.

The man, who Martino said was clean-cut and dressed nicely, told the track’s manager he was there with Stewart and asked him for help obtaining a new generator for the tour bus he was driving.

“His story just started having a lot of inconsistencies, so we asked him for some identification,” Martino said. “He refused to give us identification and then took off in the bus.”

Track officials, suspicious of the man’s story, provided authorities with the license plate number of the tour bus, which turned out to belong to Gayle — the younger sister of Loretta Lynn, known for her long brown hair and hits such as “Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue.”

Gayle didn’t even know the bus was missing from the Nashville garage where it was parked until speedway officials called Thursday night, police said.

Her husband and manager, Bill Gatzimos, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Friday, but he told WSMV-TV, “There’s got to be a country song in having your bus stolen and taken for a joyride by a fugitive.”

Gayle spokesman Kirt Webster said they are trying to confirm reports the bus has been found abandoned in Florida.

The tour bus is only one of several vehicles Gay is believed to have stolen on his odyssey, which authorities speculate happened like this.

Shortly after escaping from a prisoner transport van at a rest stop near Hardeeville, S.C., he stole a pickup, and went to the Atlanta suburb of Forest Park, where he stole a truck tractor. He drove the bobtail rig to Manchester, Tenn., where on Monday he hooked the cab to a Wal-Mart trailer filled with $300,000 in merchandise and took off again.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation into the theft.

Gay has a history of thefts and escape, authorities say. There are warrants out for him in several Tennessee jurisdictions for theft of heavy equipment that Douglas said cost “well over $1 million.” When he escaped, he was being sent to Pell City, Ala., on warrants charging him to appear on escape and felony charges.

Tennessee authorities spotted Gay in the Wal-Mart truck Tuesday in Pleasant View, about 25 miles northwest of Nashville, and gave chase. He got to within 50 yards of his mother’s house before abandoning the rig and fleeing into some woods.

“What he done was wrong, but he knows his momma don’t have long,” his mother, Anna Shull, told The Tennessean earlier this week.

Efforts to contact Gay’s family were unsuccessful Friday.

Authorities don’t think Gay has achieved the goal that prompted his escape.

“I don’t know that he saw his mom,” Douglas said.