UPDATE: Police Find Escaped Criminal - WLNS TV 6 Lansing - Jackson | Your Local News Leader

UPDATE: Police Find Escaped Criminal

Posted: Updated:
By Maria Hechanova - email

Eaton County Sheriff's Deputies spent the monring hunting for a man who broke out of the courthourse after being sentenced.

21-year-old Lansing resident John Lee Davis was sentenced to 30 days for a retail fraud, a misdemeanor. Rather than do the time, officials say he bolted out of the courtroom after Judge Harvey Hoffman handed down his sentence. 

"You can get lost in a corn field pretty easily. We set up a perimeter to make sure he did not leave the corn field," said Eaton County Sheriff Mike Raines.

Davis got away from a baliff in the courtroom and two security officers at the front door.

Officers quickly had the place surrounded and called in air support to try and spot him. He was found around 1:20p.m. in the cornfields next to the courthouse by an MSP K9 unit.

"If the prosecutor authorizes a charge of escape from custody, that is a felony which could be punishable to a year in state prison," said Chief Deputy Brian Peacock with the Eaton County Sheriff's Office.

He is expected to be arraigned Thursday in Eaton County.

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