Travis Lee Davis' Jailbreak is his wildest escape so far, that is, something

Travis Lee Davis, a 30-year-old squirrel poacher from rural Missouri, was still on the run this morning after escaping from Sedalia's jail last weekend and then having stole a police car 350 kilometers south of Oklahoma.

The steep 150-pound bearing the Eye of Providence tattooed on the throat is the subject of a manhunt in several states. Authorities say it's dangerous – and hard to hold.

"He's an artist of escape," LeFlore County, Oklahoma, said Sheriff Rob Seale at Riverfront Times.

Davis has a long history of racing, fighting and sometimes flight from the police.

In 2012, an agent from the Missouri Department of Conservation said to have followed him into Morgan County as part of a wildlife poaching investigation. In a freezer belonging to the family of Davis' girlfriend, investigators found deer meat, a raccoon and seven squirrels, according to court records. When they came to pick up Davis, they had to chase him through the woods before placing him in custody, the officer said.

In 2015, Sedalia's police officers checking the warrants saw Davis in a house. As soon as he saw them, he shouted "These guys do not know me" and climbed to the floor, police said. He broke a window on the floor and started down the wall before spotting another officer and returning to the interior. One of the policemen fell to the ground on the porch while they were looking in the house. Davis crossed another spot off the ground and they eventually found him hiding under a bed, the police said.

It has not slowed in recent years, according to court records.

In February alone, he moved away from the Sedalia cops twice, authorities said. Officers who tried to execute a warrant for violating parole conditions had managed to catch him on February 1, but as he appeared to be suffering from an overdose, they sent him to the police station. # 39; s hospital. Before he could stop her again, he had taken off.

They tried again on February 7 after receiving information on its location. By the time the officers arrived, he had already left in a black pickup truck with plates from Georgia. Officers spotted it shortly afterwards and continued with their lighthouses and sirens. Davis spun, crashed and ran, police said.

A witness at the scene told a Sedalia police sergeant that a man and a woman had rushed to the east of the crash.

"I followed the footsteps of the accident zone through the fields, the wooded areas, the creeks, the fences that led in a direction essentially east for about 1.5 km … the sergeant writes in a statement of probable cause. "I could not locate Travis."

The police did not take long to get another bullet shot. On February 13, officers went to a house after receiving a message stating that he was there. An officer went back, noting that Davis was a "known flight risk" and was likely to come out through a window, police said in a report.

A woman at home told the police that Davis was in a room at the back with her baby. When the officers called for Davis to come out, he shouted that he had a "fucking gun" and warned them to go out, the police said. He then began threatening to kill not only the eight-month-old baby, but also a second woman, also locked up in the room, police said, Christole Hurst, his pregnant girlfriend.

The police eventually persuaded Davis to let them take the baby, but he apparently would not let Hurst go. The officers could hear him crying and when they spoke, they said it was clear that his captor was guiding her to know what to say.

"Davis went on to state that he was going to kill Hurst, and then himself," police said in a statement of probable cause.

Davis finally opened the door and said that Hurst was free to leave, said the police, but that was a fake. He had a scarf wrapped around his throat and choked him, the police said. An officer shocked him with a Taser, but it did not help him.

"Even after a complete cycle [of the Taser] Davis refused to let go of Hurst, "the police wrote.

The officer again assigned him, and the police finally managed to remove Hurst from his grip and handcuff him, they say. Hurst later told police that Davis had hit her and stomped on her head before they arrived. She claimed that he had used methamphetamine that morning.

Davis was charged with kidnapping, assaulting and endangering the well-being of a child and was sentenced to Pettis County Jail. He was there less than a month before the last escape, which led to the current manhunt.

In the typical Davis way, the jailbreak was a surprising and determined affair.

Prison authorities in Sedalia first noticed that Davis was missing from cell 2G-3 during routine checks, authorities said. Surveillance footage and witnesses to detainees revealed that he had climbed to the ceiling on Saturday night, crossed the rafters and passed through a hole in a concrete wall, according to a statement of probable cause.

He then climbed into a maintenance closet leading to an outside door. The investigators think that from there, he jumped into the street and ran.

His travels in the days that followed are troubled. But it made its appearance early Wednesday morning at Choctaw Travel Plaza, a service station and casino operated by the Native American tribe, in the small town of Heavener, Oklahoma.

Celestial cops and members of the tribal police reacted after a woman told casino staff that Davis had kidnapped her. She claimed that she had escaped after falling asleep in the car.

After a brief fight, the officers managed to handcuff that elusive escapee and place him in the back of a Heavener patrol vehicle, authorities said. As the officers questioned the woman, Davis managed to work his hands behind his back, forcing a small sign into the rear seat cage and sneaking through an opening of less than two feet into the front seat.

"He's a little skinny, so he crawled through the cage wall and managed to get on the front," said Seale, the Sheriff of LeFlore County, whose department also reacted.

The patrol car, a Dodge Charger, was still rolling and Davis pulled it out of the parking lot. It was less than two miles before leaving the road and crashing into a tree.

A 40/29 News reporter would later show a video of the mutilated front of the Dodge, a deep V in the sturdy push bumper.

Even that did not stop Davis, who bailed out and ran, says the sheriff. He was still in the wind this morning.

Seale says it's possible that he's boarded a freight train that passes by. There is a hub for Kansas City Southern Railway nearby.

"We have people jumping on trains to Heavener all the time," Seale said.

Shortly after the patrol car accident, an informant reported seeing a white man riding a box car halfway down the long train. The police forces were able to stop the train about 35 miles north to Gans, Oklahoma. They searched the train and its surroundings, but did not find Davis.

Seale says that they can not be sure that he even got on the train. There have been other observations reported. Workers of the LeFlore Baptist Association, located about twenty miles north of Heavener, in the town of Poteau, told the authorities that a man soaked, tattooed on the throat, arrived at their door , asking where he could find free clothes. They sent him back to another place in town, but Seale said he had never been there.

The case took another strange turn when investigators took a closer look at Davis' time spent at Choctaw Travel Plaza. Their victim in the alleged abduction was shown on a video surveillance game at the casino more than two hours before calling the police. Seale identified the woman as Hurst, the girlfriend Davis is accused of holding the hostage before her arrest a month ago in Sedalia.

Seale now feels that Hurst was not a victim of kidnapping, but an accomplice to the escape of the Missouri escapee.

"I'm going to have fees for aiding and abetting [against Hurst] because his story about his kidnapping was false, "said Seale, adding that he also planned to also accuse him of having completed a fake police report.

Seale thinks she lost her money and decided to report Davis in a complicated attempt to get more. Once the police finished interviewing her, she called her father, who had fired money via Western Union at the local Walmart. She took the money and left in her 2004 Green Cadillac, supposed to have returned home to Missouri, Seale said.

By the time the Oklahoma investigators began to suspect that something was happening with Hurst, she was already gone. Seale says she has never been to Sedalia and we do not know where she is. He says that they have since learned that she had called Davis in the days leading up to her escape from prison and that she is suspected of having driven into the south of Missouri before she to finally go to Oklahoma.

It's a theory, but he wonders if she has reconnected with Davis somewhere.

"We are always looking for and monitoring," he says.

Anyone with information about Davis can call the LeFlore County Sheriff's Office at 918-647-2317 or the Pettis County Sheriff's Office at 660-827-0052.

We welcome tips and comments. Email the author at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter at the following address: @DoyleMurphy.

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