A convict who escaped a prison van to pay a final visit to his dying mother ended up driving himself on a 1Â 600km odyssey through Dixieland in the country music star Crystal Gayle’s stolen tour bus.
In a plot reminiscent of the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit, Christopher Gay also used an 18-wheel articulated lorry to evade capture during a five-state manhunt and was finally arrested indulging his passion for motor racing at Florida’s famed Daytona International Speedway.
Gay’s grand adventure began during a toilet stop in Hardeeville, South Carolina, when he fled from the van taking him to Alabama to answer the latest charges of a long career in burglary, fraud and theft.
He drove 480km north to Manchester, Tennessee, in a stolen pick-up truck before taking a Wal-Mart lorry for the final 32km of the journey to the Nashville suburb of Pleasant View, where his mother, Anna Shull, has just weeks to live with colon cancer.
But Gay (33) was thwarted just 50m from his target by police surrounding his mother’s trailer, and he disappeared into nearby woods. “What he done was wrong, but he knows his momma don’t have long,” said Shull (56) “He’s got a heart as big as his head is.”
After emerging from the woods, Gay took a tour bus belonging to Gayle from a garage in nearby Whites Creek. He drove it south through Tennessee and Georgia to a racetrack in Lakeland, Florida, where he claimed to be an assistant of the Nascar racing champion Tony Stewart. “He didn’t look the part,” said track manager Barry Williams, who called the police. “He said he was going to McDonald’s in the bus.”
Officers finally caught up with Gay 160km away in Daytona Beach as he watched another racing event. On Sunday night, he was in Volusia county jail, awaiting extradition to Alabama or Tennessee, where he also has outstanding arrest warrants.
“My heart goes out to him and his family,” Gayle said. “It’s a sad story, his mother is very ill. I hope he gets to see her.” – Guardian Unlimited Â