Metro Atlanta

Escaped drug dealer’s 10-year run ends after almost hitting Cobb cop

By Ben Brasch
July 26, 2018

Dennis Kitchens will spend two more years beyond bars for escaping prison and a decade of avoiding capture.

On Tuesday a federal judge tacked on the extra time to the 57-year-old man’s original sentence for drugs charges, court records show.

“Inmates who escape from prison threaten the safety of our communities,” U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak said in a news release. “Eventually, the road will run out for them and they will be found and prosecuted, as in this case.”

U.S. Marshals looked for Kitchens during his 10 years outside, but the road did eventually run out for him — in Cobb County, about 18½ miles from the minimum-security penitentiary in south Atlanta he escaped from in June 2006.


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In January 2017, when he was pulled over in a 1991 Oldsmobile Regency on Powder Springs Road.

He cut in front of a Cobb police lieutenant so quickly that, according to a warrant, the lieutenant had to “slam on the brakes in order to prevent a collision.”

The cop wrote that Kitchens was “acting extremely nervous and could not answer simple questions as to how old he was.”


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Officers found 25 baggies of crack cocaine and about 40 pills in the car, the warrant said, along with his real identity.

Kitchens was originally sentenced in 2004 to about 12½ years on crack cocaine trafficking charges.

Prosecutors did not say in their news release how Kitchens escaped and did not immediately respond when asked Thursday.

In March 2018, he was sentenced to 10 years more for the drugs he was found with after cutting off the cop.

When he is done with prison, Kitchens will have three years of supervised release for escaping.


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About the Author

Ben Brasch is the reporter tasked with keeping Fulton County government accountable. The Florida native moved to Atlanta for a job with The AJC. If there's something important to you going on in Fulton, he wants to know about it. Help him better metro Atlanta by dropping a line, anonymously or otherwise.

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