By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
In the past two years, local law enforcement officers and federal marshals have located and taken into custody inside Atmore’s city limits individuals who fled here to escape the justice systems of Texas, Massachusetts and New York.
Authorities can now add Michigan to the list. And the latest fugitive taken into custody in Atmore can only blame himself that his temporary freedom came to a grinding halt.
Jaquavious Pennington, a 24-year-old whose driver’s license lists him as a resident of Troy, Alabama, was taken into custody by Atmore police on December 13. The arrest came after Pennington filed a complaint with city police when he was unable to retrieve some personal property he left inside a building he had been leasing but on which he had not kept up the monthly payments.
“One of our investigators responded to a Carver Avenue address on a complaint,” Police Chief Chuck Brooks said. “Pennington wanted a keyboard out of a building he had been renting, but the locks had been changed. Further investigation determined that he was wanted in Michigan, so we obtained a fugitive-from-justice warrant and took him into custody.”
According to Escambia County Detention Center records, Pennington was being sought by Michigan authorities on a third-degree child sex offense that included force or coercion.
According to an employee of the county jail’s booking and release division, Pennington remained in the facility this week, where Brooks said he would be held until he appears before a (federal) district judge and decides to either waive or fight extradition to Michigan.