Jail escapee Jeremy M. Hanks tried his best to blend in with guests and tourists at Sundance Friday afternoon, but to no avail.
Moments after he lowered a newspaper enough to give detectives a clear view of his face, he was quietly arrested, taken into custody and on his way back to the county jail.Hanks, 19, escaped from the jail Tuesday afternoon. He used a rope fashioned from bedsheets to scale a 25-foot fence surrounding an exercise yard. He left his pants and a pair of shoes on top of the barbed-wire topped wall, leading investigators to believe someone from outside the jail assisted his escape.
Since his escape, law enforcement officers have been "that far behind him every time," said sheriff's detective Dan Taylor, measuring off an inch with his fingers. Payson police officers almost apprehended Hanks Wednesday night.Yesterday it seemed even the weather would give Hanks another inch to run in.
The Utah County sheriff's office received a tip Friday afternoon that Hanks was at Sundance. Around 3:30 p.m. Utah Highway Patrol troopers shut down the North Fork Road at the Provo Canyon turnoff and at Aspen Grove. A sheriff's SWAT team prepared to travel to the resort.
And then a roadblock, literally, developed. A torrential rainstorm sent mud and rock cascading onto the North Fork Road at 4:30 p.m. about a quarter mile below the resort. The half-mile-long mudslide blocked both travel lanes.
"The slide really threw us," said detective Scott Carter.
Meanwhile, Hanks, wearing shorts, a T-shirt and a pair of sunglasses, sat nonchalantly in the restaurant at Sundance, reading the newspaper and having a bite to eat. He believed a friend was coming to pick him up.
Instead, sheriff's detectives and SWAT team members climbed into a pickup truck and drove over the mudslide. The undercover detectives took a table in the restaurant not far from Hanks and waited to get a good view of his face, Carter said.
"They sat down, ordered dinner and watched for the (newspaper) to come down enough for them to ID him," Carter said.
They arrested him in the building at approximately 5:20 p.m. Hanks initially denied who he was but did not resist arrest, Carter said. He was not armed.
"We're just glad we got him before there was any more violent crime committed," Carter said. "We have heard that there's been threats made against officers in Springville and certain prosecutors."
On Monday, Hanks was sentenced to one year in the county jail on a bicycle theft charge. He had pleaded guilty to the robbery of a jewelry store in University Mall and was scheduled to be sentenced for that crime Wednesday.
At the time of his escape, Hanks had been scheduled for arraignment on Aug. 25 on charges of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault, all first degree felonies. The charges stem from the June 1989 kidnapping and rape of a Springville woman.
In addition, he is suspected of other sexual assaults in Springville and armed robberies in Provo and Orem, Nielsen said.