US Fugitive Found in Own 'Elaborate Tunnel System'

Jeremy Beebe really didn't want to go to prison: police
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jan 31, 2016 4:34 PM CST
US Fugitive Found in Own 'Elaborate Tunnel System'
Sitka Police Sgt. Walter Smith stands in the entryway of a tunneled space under a trailer in Vitskari Trailer Park in Sitka, Alaska, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016.   (James Poulson/The Daily Sitka Sentinel via AP)

Authorities arrested a fugitive convicted on drug and theft charges after finding him hiding this week in what they called an "elaborate tunnel system" dug underneath a trailer home in Alaska, the AP reports. The tunnels narrowed as officers walked further in, forcing them to trudge through on their knees and then on their stomachs. Police in the city of Sitka say they eventually spotted Jeremy Beebe's foot sticking out of another hidden entrance, catching him after an officer pulled back the skirting around the trailer. Police Lt. Lance Ewers says Beebe, 42, had failed to report to the police department on Jan. 12 after he was sentenced to nearly two years in prison, the Sitka Sentinel reports. Acting on a tip, officers staked out a trailer park Wednesday and saw Beebe heading in to one of the units.

Told by a woman who answered the door that Beebe wasn't home, the officers found a "dungeon door," Ewers tells Alaska Public Radio. "It was like a door, you go down these stairs, and it was locked from the inside. ... So we got the battering ram out and went to town on the door and blasted it open with the battering ram and entered the dungeons." Ewers says they spotted Beebe in the tunnels and told him to come out, but when he moved out of sight, the manhunt resumed outside amid abandoned car, boat, and motorcycle parts. Officers found another tunnel entrance amid the trash, saw Beebe again, and grabbed him by the ankle. When he slithered away, they simply ripped siding off the trailer and dragged him out. "He was pretty motivated," Ewers says. "He didn’t want to come to jail." (More fugitive stories.)

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