For escaped Georgia prisoners Ricky Dubose and Donnie Russell Rowe, the end began when they burst into the home of an elderly couple near Shelbyville, Tn. and tied them up, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Leaving the couple bound, Dubose and Rowe took off three hours later with the couple’s cell phone and Jeep. As they were driving away, a Tennessee trooper was arriving at the couple’s home to perform a welfare check. Officials credited two neighbors for holding Dubose and Rowe at gunpoint until they arrived. A homeowner noticed the men in his driveway and called a neighbor over to hold them at gunpoint.
Three days earlier, the two men had escaped from a prison bus in after killing two Georgia corrections officers. In Tennessee yesterday, they led police on a 10-mile car chase that ended in a wreck and gunshots. They then fled into the woods and ended up in a homeowner’s yard. The fugitives still had the slain officers guns. “It happened the way we thought it would,” said Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan. “They would do a crime and it would escalate.”