Hall Co. prison escapee back behind bars

RIVERDALE - The Hall County Correctional Institute inmate who apparently walked away from a work detail in north Hall County Monday is back behind bars.<br /> <br /> Hall County Correctional Institute Warden Walt Davis confirmed that Derrick Crawford was captured without incident Tuesday night at a girlfriend's house in metro Atlanta.<br /> <br /> While he is in custody, Davis said Crawford will not be transported back to Hall County.<br /> <br /> "He will be transported to a higher security facility within the state prison system," Davis said.<br /> <br /> Tony Schilling, a Supervisory Inspector for the U.S. Marshals Service Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, said there have been five to ten people looking for Crawford since Monday.<br /> <br /> Schilling said they followed a number of leads and basically had Crawford running from place to place. When they found him Tuesday night, Schilling said it was at a place they'd visited before, a house in Riverdale in Clayton County.<br /> <br /> Schilling said there were lights on at the house, but no vehicles. Authorities didn't think anyone was home when they got their break.<br /> <br /> "As they were talking on the front porch, they looked down and he (Crawford) was hiding in the bushes below," Schilling said.<br /> <br /> "By his statements (to) our officers, he was waiting for someone to get home. He had no where else to go," Schilling added.<br /> <br /> Schilling said Crawford was the only person at the house during that arrest, but Davis confirmed other people had been arrested for aiding and abetting Crawford.<br /> <br /> "I don't know the number of those arrests or what their relationships were to the inmate," Davis said.<br /> <br /> A citizen's alert that transmitted to Hall County residents Monday afternoon indicated authorities believed Crawford had left the area in a black Dodge Charger.<br /> <br /> Crawford had been serving a ten-year prison sentence for trafficking cocaine in Douglas County.<br /> <br /> Davis said he was pleased the the collaboration between authorities in Hall County, the state corrections system and the Marshals Service.<br /> <br /> "We're just very pleased that this came to a satisfactory outcome and that he's back where he belongs, and that the citizen's of Hall County can go about having a Merry Christmas now," Davis said.

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