by Escaped Alabama inmate Casey White was captured after a police chase and missing prison guard Vicky White was hospitalized with a “very serious” self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The arrest occurred near Evansville, Indiana, after the vehicle Casey White was driving overturned during a pursuit by police, US Marshal Marty Keely confirmed. Vicky White was a passenger on the truck.
The arrest came 11 days into the national manhunt for the couple, after Vicky White led a chained Casey White out of jail and they disappeared.
“Today we took a dangerous man off the street,” Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton told AL.com after Monday afternoon’s arrest.
No law enforcement officers fired their weapons during the capture of the inmate and prison guard, US Marshal Keely confirmed.
Sheriff Singleton said that after the chase, 38-year-old Casey White turned himself in to police.
“This has ended a very long, stressful and challenging week and a half,” the sheriff added.
“It ended as we knew it would: with them in custody. He will never see the light of day again and that is a good thing, not only for our community, but for this country.”
The sheriff said he hoped Vicky White, 56, would survive her injuries.
“I hope he survives this. I don’t know the extent of his injuries, but I hope he survives,” she said. “We don’t wish Vicky any harm in terms of her health or her well-being, but she has some answers for us. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to get those answers.”
The severity of his injuries has not been made public.
He added that his capture had been made difficult by the level of planning that had apparently gone into his escape.
“What was so challenging about this escape was that most escapes from a county jail are not planned, they’re kind of spontaneous,” he said.
“There are no resources available, no plan in place for ‘What am I going to do when I get out of here, other than run?'”
He added: “Obviously, this escape was well planned and calculated. A lot of preparation went into this. They had a lot of resources, they had labels, they had vehicles. They had everything they needed to pull this off.”
And he admitted that he had learned something from the whole experience.
“The lesson I learned, and I think everyone learned, is that you don’t know who you can trust,” he said.
“I had all my trust in Vicky White. She has been an exemplary employee and what the hell provoked or prompted her to do a stunt like this, I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll ever know. Sometimes you just don’t know people. You think so, and you really don’t know who they are.”
He also said that when she is transferred back to Alabama, Vicky White will be held in a different correctional facility than Casey White, according to AL.com.
Meanwhile, Indiana’s Vanderburgh County Sheriff Dave Wedding offered slightly different details of the arrest, saying Vicky White was driving the couple in a Cadillac car when they were pulled over.
The sheriff said the U.S. Marshals Task Force collided with the vehicle Vicky White and Casey White were in to end the chase.
“The man and woman fled in a vehicle on Highway 41 northbound, passed Highway 57 as you can see, turned here on Birch Park Drive, came through this grassy area,” Sheriff Wedding said.
“The Marshals task force intercepted them, actually collided with them to try to end the chase.”
He added: “Two bad people are off the streets,” Sheriff Wedding told reporters from the scene of the arrest.
The sheriff said the pair appear to have been in Indiana for six days before their capture.
“It’s hard to believe they were here for so many days. They are criminals, sometimes they do things that are unexplainable, but I’m glad they did it,” she said.
The bailiff added that Casey White’s enormous stature aided in his capture. “In this case, one of the suspects is 6-foot-9, which is good for us,” he said.
And he told reporters at the scene that Vicky White’s injuries were “very serious” and described her as “pretty serious.”
Their capture came after investigators received a tip to the couple’s location Sunday night and tracked them to a hotel in the state where they fled. The sheriff said they don’t know why the couple ended up in Indiana.
Witness Cory Bradley told CNN he was driving on Highway 41 in Evansville, Indiana, when more than a dozen police cars flew past him.
“It scared the hell out of me when they flew by,” Bradley told the news network.
“A little further on, we were in stopped traffic, and that’s when I heard what was going on and took the video as it went by. I kept it moving. I thought I’d stop since it’s a national story. We don’t get a lot of action like that around here,” Bradley said.
Casey White is now charged with elopement, and Vicky White is charged with allowing/aiding elopement, identity theft, and second degree forgery.
Last week, authorities released images of what 56-year-old Vicky White would look like if she changed her blonde hair to a darker or shorter color.
Images shared by officials of what Vicky White would look like with darker, shorter hair
(US Marshals Service)
They also posted images of Casey White’s signature tattoos. The pair are not related despite sharing a last name.
The “subjects are to be considered dangerous and may be armed with an AR-15 rifle, handguns and a shotgun,” the agency said.
The Marshals Service says that in 2015 Casey White threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend and her sister, saying he wanted police to kill him.
The US Marshals Service released new images of Casey Cole White’s signature tattoos
(US Marshals Service)
He was being held in the Lauderdale County Jail awaiting trial on capital murder charges against him, already serving a 75-year sentence for crimes committed in 2015. The couple was released from the Lauderdale County Detention Center on March 29. April, and officials said they may have had a romantic relationship before fleeing.
A warrant has been issued for Vicky White’s arrest and she faces charges of allowing or facilitating flight in the first degree.
Last Friday the car in which they had left Alabama was found abandoned in Tennessee.
The Monday before the arrest, the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office slapped its own employee, Vicky White, with new charges of second-degree identity theft and forgery.
The charges relate to Mrs. White allegedly using an alias to purchase a getaway car that was used “to facilitate the escape,” authorities said.
Surveillance footage also showed Casey White in Indiana near where investigators found a second abandoned vehicle tied to him and his lover, the corrections officer.
White has tattoos related to white supremacist gangs and what appears to be the Confederate flag.
(US Marshals Service)
Video footage captured the capital murder suspect entering the Weinbach Car Wash in Evansville, Indiana on Tuesday.
Additional video footage also showed Vicky White at a Quality Inn hotel just hours before she disappeared with Casey White.
The video, shared by the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday, shows Ms. White pacing in front of the reception desk at a Quality Inn around 5:21 a.m. on Friday, April 29.
The 56-year-old woman, who is wearing a dark sweatshirt with her blonde hair loose on her shoulders, glances over the counter before walking away.
The footage was captured on the morning of the prison break, with officials saying Ms White stayed at the budget hotel for two nights before fleeing.
Sheriff Rick Singleton said the Quality Inn is next to the shopping center where the couple left Mrs. White’s squad car in the parking lot and transferred to a getaway vehicle.
