“About 15 police cruisers from three counties and a Knox County Helicopter all converged near my house on Sky Way searching for someone,” Tony Lambert, a Herald staff member stated.
Apparently a juvenile was picked up from a home on Burnett Lane for truancy. According to reports, the juvenile was handcuffed and placed in the Sevier County Deputies Cruiser.
Somehow, the juvenile forced his was out of the cruiser while the officer was talking with the juvenile’s mother.
A foot chase ensued up Sky Way, a very steep hill. That is where the juvenile was able to escape and cross over to Knox County.
By crossing over into another county, the Deputy, for lack of jurisdiction, contacted Knox County Sheriff’s Department to assist in the pursuit.
Not long after, several of the Knox, Sevier and Blount cruisers, including a K-9 unit, sped off in different directions to search for the juvenile.
“I got a call on my cell phone from my husband asking me where I was and when I’d be home,” Jenni Sanjurjo told the Herald.
Sanjurjo was informed by her husband that the police had gone door to door in the neighborhood asking people if they had seen anyone suspicious and to keep their doors locked as they were searching for an escaped convict.
“When I finally did get home and was inside, my husband said I wonder what he looks like and at that time I looked out the back window and saw this person peering over the fence and when he saw me looking at him, he took off running,” stated Sanjurjo. “I turned to my husband and said, I guess that’s what he looks like.”
“As I was coming home, at least seven cop cars were coming down Sky Way at a high rate of speed and pulled into Sanjurjo’s driveway,” stated Lambert.
“That must have been right after Jenni saw the juvenile,” Lambert surmised.
Two hours into the search the mother of the juvenile had contacted a relative, Mike Green who is the juvenile’s uncle, to assist in the search.
According to Lambert, about the same time as the cruisers were pulling into Sanjurjo’s driveway, Green drove up Burnett Lane and saw his nephew, the escaped juvenile, run across the street practically in front of him.
Green jumped out of his vehicle, and observed his nephew’s head bobbing up and down running in the weeds.
Lambert said, “Mike told me he immediately started running to intercept his nephew to prevent the K-9 from attacking him as an officer and the K-9 also observed the juvenile running. When Mike caught his nephew, he jumped on him and covered him to protect him from the K-9. While Mike laid on top of his nephew, the officer called the K-9 off just feet from the two on the ground.”
This juvenile still wore the handcuffs placed on him by the arresting officer three hours earlier. This time the juvenile was also shackled.
The juvenile was initially arrested because he didn’t attend a required meeting imposed by the juvenile truancy court.
The juvenile’s problem originally began when he skipped school for one month because of fear of getting beaten up again.
Apparently the juvenile had been jumped in school on three separate occasions without provocation on his part.
After the juvenile was recaptured, the ambulance was called to check the scratches and bruises he received from running thru the woods.
The juvenile was apprehended in Sevier County with the aid of at least fifteen deputies from three counties and a civilian.