A man who escaped from a Mississippi courthouse nearly 70 days ago was taken into custody after barricading himself overnight inside a Chicago restaurant less than a mile from where the Democratic National Convention is being held, the authorities said.
The man, Joshua Zimmerman, escaped on June 14 from the DeSoto County Courthouse in Hernando, Mississippi, where he had been scheduled to appear for a hearing, Justin Smith, the chief deputy of the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, said at a news conference on Tuesday night.
Mr. Smith said the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office was notified on Tuesday afternoon by the U.S. Marshals Service that Mr. Zimmerman had been located at a seafood restaurant in Chicago. He was taken into custody Wednesday morning, the Marshals Service said.
The Marshals Service said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Zimmerman had been working at the establishment and that during an initial arrest attempt he retreated into the ceiling and barricaded himself.
While the restaurant where he was barricaded was near the United Center, where the Democratic National Convention is being held, the Marshal’s Service said there was no connection or threat to the event.
Mr. Zimmerman is wanted for homicide in Texas, escape in DeSoto County, Miss., and absconding in Connecticut, according to the DeSoto County District Attorney’s Office. DeSoto County, Miss., is about 20 miles south of Memphis, and more than 500 miles from Chicago.
Surveillance video from the Mississippi courthouse that Mr. Zimmerman escaped from in June shows him wearing plain clothes and walking out of a door with no handcuffs or shackles. It was unclear if Mr. Zimmerman was being guarded by the police at the time of his escape or what security measures were in place to prevent inmates from leaving the building.
Mr. Smith told reporters at the news conference on Tuesday that he believed Mr. Zimmerman was not armed. “We know that he’s by himself in there,” Mr. Smith said. “There’s no innocent civilians. It’s only Zimmerman inside the building.”
The Chicago Police Department did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday morning.
Video of the police scene on Tuesday captured by local news stations showed numerous law enforcement agencies, including the F.B.I., surrounding a restaurant that appears to be located in a strip mall.
At the news conference, Mr. Smith said his department was eager to get Mr. Zimmerman back into custody in Mississippi and that they wanted to question him about his escape.
“We just want to talk to him,” Mr. Smith said. “We want to find out what happened. We’re parsing together information and he’s the center of the puzzle, so having him in our hands will give us some really good leads on how all this transpired and if he did have assistance.”
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