After nearly two years of freedom, a man accused of escaping a work release program was arrested following a high-speed chase in Clayton County, authorities said.
Eric Harris, 23, was spotted by Clayton deputies on Tuesday while driving his Jaguar on Flat Shoals Road, Sheriff Victor Hill said Friday in a news release.
The Stone Mountain man had been wanted since November 2018 on a felony escape warrant out of Gwinnett County, according to authorities. Online jail records show Gwinnett deputies arrested him a month earlier and charged him with violating his probation. It is not clear why he was on probation.
Details about the escape weren’t available Friday, but the sheriff said Harris also had a warrant charging him with aggravated assault against a police officer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
According to Hill, Harris drove away from deputies “at a high rate of speed” when they tried to box in his luxury car Tuesday evening. During the chase, he turned onto Ga. 314 and drove toward Godby Road before losing control of the Jaguar and crashing at the end of the highway, authorities said.
Harris got out of the car and ran, but was tracked down by a sheriff’s office K-9, according to the release. Inside the wrecked vehicle, deputies discovered several credit cards with different names on them, marijuana and a gun.
Harris faces a dozen charges, including financial transaction card theft, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon or first offender, third-degree cruelty to children, reckless conduct, misdemeanor marijuana possession, obstruction of an officer and fleeing from police. He is also charged with several traffic violations stemming from the pursuit, online jail records show.
Harris is being held at the Clayton County Jail without bond.
In April 2017, Harris was arrested in Atlanta after someone saw him fighting with his girlfriend outside a Buckhead salon and called police to report a kidnapping, AJC.com previously reported.
The witness worried that Harris forced his girlfriend into an SUV and drove off, so they followed the couple to a nearby gas station.
Officers eventually spotted the SUV at a Chick-Fil-A, but Harris ran from police. His girlfriend told detectives the entire thing was a misunderstanding and that she hadn’t been kidnapped, but Harris was taken into custody after police learned he was wanted in connection with a Florida burglary from a year earlier.
AJC.com has reached out to authorities for more information about Harris' alleged 2018 escape from work release.
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