NEWBURY TOWNSHIP, Ind., Feb. 3 (UPI) -- A convicted murderer is on the run after escaping from a Michigan prison Sunday night, with police intensifying a manhunt after he abducted a woman in her car.
Michael David Elliot, 40, who is serving a life sentence for shooting four people in 1993, pried the bottoms of two fences apart and escaped the Ionia Correctional Facility in western Michigan, according to the State Department of Corrections spokesman Russell Marlan.
He was discovered missing around 9:30 p.m.
According to the woman who was rescued by police from a locked bathroom at gas station in Elkhart, Ind., Elliot forced his way into her car when she was parked in her red Jeep Liberty not far from the prison in Ionia. He told her he was an escaped convict and was carrying a hammer and a box cutter, she said.
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When they stopped for gas in Elkhart, she was able to run from the car and barricade herself in the bathroom and call police from a concealed cell phone.
"He just wants to get someplace far from Ionia," she told the dispatcher. On the recording, the dispatcher can be heard telling other emergency workers that Elliot was "knocking on the bathroom door saying, 'Let's go!'"
Elliot left the gas station in the Jeep before police arrived to rescue the woman. The truck was found Monday, abandoned in Shipshewana, about 20 miles away from Elkhart.
"Residents in Shipshewana and surrounding areas: lock your residences and stay indoors. Only answer door for law enforcement," warned the LaGrange County, Ind., sheriff's department.
Michigan Corrections Department Director Dan Heyns said they were taken completely by surprise by Elliot's escape, saying he had been a model prisoner since his 1994 conviction.
It wasn't clear if the prison fence, which was both electrified and equipped with motion sensors, was malfunctioning when Elliot escaped.
"There was a perimeter vehicle with an armed officer who was circling the facility during this time period," added Marlan. "He was able to evade or avoid detection."
"The response was good but he'd left the area by the time we were mobilized totally 100 percent," Heyns said. It didn't take him long to get down to Indiana. His flight path now has expanded dramatically."
Indiana State Police say they have set up a perimeter around the place where the Jeep was found, and Indianans in the area surrounding Shipshewana are being warned to stay indoors.
[WSBT] [CNN]
