By Mark Davis, Marcus K. Garner
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — Christopher Daniel Gay, you are an outlaw legend.
The guy who unlocked his handcuffs while his deputy captor stopped at a Kennesaw Waffle House loomed large in North Georgia, a day after the 35-year-old Tennessean gave cops the slip.
Fugitive, escape artist, the subject of song and magazine profile: Gay, already known as “Little Houdini” for his slippery ways, remained at large Wednesday evening.
Wanted in Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama for stealing big rigs and heavy machinery, among other things, Gay’s escape is only extending his lore.
Area police teamed up with Coffee County (Tenn.) Sheriff’s deputies to search for Gay.
His escape happened in the parking lot of the Frey Road Waffle House, close to I-75. A Coffee County deputy was bringing Gay from Florida to Tennessee to face charges of stealing a truck from a Tennessee Wal-Mart. It’s a long drive from Florida to Tennessee, and Gay had been locked up for three months in an Orlando jail.
The officer stopped at the restaurant for food to go.
Food wasn’t the only thing that went.
The deputy left Gay in the car, confident the prisoner wouldn’t get out of handcuffs, leg shackles and a belly chain. The deputy ordered and returned to his car.
“When he opened the door, [Gay] bolted,” said Coffee County Sheriff Steven Graves.
Graves said his deputy searched Gay before putting him into the squad car in Florida. A key or picking device may have aided Gay in his escape, he said.
“Handcuffs are easy, that’s the only way you can get free from belly chains or leg shackles,” Graves said.
Gay sprinted toward Kennesaw State University, a few hundred yards away. University officials think he went to the East Deck. Students reported seeing the 5-foot-5 escapee at the university’s Science Building, too.
Authorities weren’t far behind. “The first thing I know, I look up and all of Cobb County [police] are in the parking lot,” said Dennis McCoy, training manager for the Waffle House.
Dogs, helicopters, police: They sniffed, hovered, asked questions. And?
“If you ask me, he’s loooong gone,” said McCoy.
“This is the same story,” said Michael Douglas, police chief of Pleasant View, Tenn., who’s familiar with Gay’s history. “That’s how he got away before.”
Gay’s most notorious escapade began as an effort to visit his dying mother, and is mentioned in a ballad by Tim O’Brien, a West Virginia-based songwriter who won a 2005 Grammy.
In January 2007, while being transported to Alabama to face charges for stealing a recreational vehicle, Gay slipped away from a pair of policemen at a rest stop in South Carolina, Douglas said.
Then, Gay stole a pickup and drove it nearly 300 miles northwest to Manchester. In Manchester, Gay allegedly took a Wal-Mart tractor-trailer loaded with thousands of dollars of merchandise, and drove to Pleasant View, about 30 miles from Nashville and 15 miles from his Robertson County birth home.
“Police get into pursuit with him and chase him into Pleasant View,” Douglas said. “He runs the truck into his mother’s front yard, then runs into the woods.”
News reports --- and O’Brien’s song --- say Gay was trying to visit Anna Shull, who was dying of cancer. The song, sung to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “Pretty Boy Floyd,” mentions the moment:
“Stole a pickup in Carolina, then a Wal-Mart truck with 18 wheels. He drove toward his dyin’ mama in the Cheatham County hills. And it’s down those lanes and back roads the police made their chase. And he almost made her trailer, he almost saw her face.”
Gay’s mother died weeks later of cancer, according to The Associated Press.
“I just knew there was a song in there,” O’Brien said on acousticguitarforum.com. “Chris Gay’s mother even rhymed for a reporter saying, ‘What he done was wrong, but he knows his mama don’t have long.’ ”
After escaping authorities in Pleasant View, Douglas said Gay made his way to Nashville, and made off with country singer Crystal Gayle’s tour bus.
“He drove it to Florida to a NASCAR race,” Douglas said.
According to the Palm Beach Post, Gay told the manager of a Lakeland, Fla., racetrack that he was there to pick up driver Tony Stewart, but it was discovered that he was driving Gayle’s bus.
In Tennessee, Gay is wanted for stealing over $1 million worth of construction equipment, Douglas said.
In Kennesaw on Tuesday, police alerted the campus about 3 p.m. that an unarmed fugitive, not considered dangerous, was somewhere about. Officials evacuated the Science and Clendenin buildings, where students were readying for midterm exams. By 5:30 p.m., cops decided that Gay was no longer on campus. Still, they canceled evening classes, to be safe.
Students joked about Gay’s alleged campus romp.
“If he’d have gone into a calculus class, he would have surrendered on the spot,” said Kayna Wilbur, a 25-year-old junior majoring in education.
And about that Wal-Mart truck, an interstate behemoth. Most thieves would be happy with a hot Honda.
“What’s up with this guy?” asked Brandie Beane, a KSU senior majoring in psychology. “Does he like taking people’s big toys?”
Ms. Beane, the police would surely like to ask him.
Copyright 2009 Atlanta Journal-Constitution