Criminal crashes through attic

Associated Press

January 17, 2007 11:17 am

— MOULTRIE, Ga. — A search for an elusive criminal came to an unexpected end when the man crashed through a ceiling from his attic refuge and landed near the officers who had come to arrest him, police said.
“Normally you have to crawl up there and root them out,” said Capt. Tommy Rabon, head of the Moultrie Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division. “But he came out on his own — the hard way.”
Officers had gone to a home Wednesday with a bail bondsman to apprehend Danny Butts, 21, for a probation violation in adjoining Brooks County. He was also on probation in Colquitt County, which includes Moultrie, for theft.
When police arrived at the home, they became suspicious when the brightly lit interior suddenly went dark, police said.
An occupant said Butts wasn’t there, but the officers spotted debris below an attic entrance and while they continued to question the woman, Butts fell through the ceiling onto a bedroom floor, police said.
“He went up into the attic trying to evade them,” Rabon said. “He fell through.”