Perp Flees Cops, Hides in Poop
(April 22) -- The you-know-what had already hit the fan when Thomas Hovis Jr. ran from police. Then he got into a deeper mess.
On Tuesday, cops raided a farm near Albion, Ind., in search of the 52-year-old, who was wanted on charges including manufacturing methamphetamine and possession of a firearm.
When police arrived at the property around 6 p.m., Hovis sprinted into a barn and jumped into a vat filled with manure.
It took cops about an hour to find the suspect, who had pried open a steel grate, hurled himself into the cesspool and buried himself up to his neck in feces, according to The Journal Gazette.
"The pig operation hadn't been in there for a while, but the previous tenant had been using it for dog kennels," Chief Deputy Doug Harp of the Noble County Sheriff's Department told the paper. "I have seen people hide in baby cribs and crawl spaces. ... I have never seen anybody hide in a liquid manure pit. That's a first."
The suspect reportedly resisted arrest after being pulled out of the manure, so police subdued him with a Taser. After being taken into custody, Hovis began shaking and talking incoherently, exhibiting signs of hypothermia from the time he spent submerged in the chilly excrement, police said
Hovis -- who fled murder charges in the 1980s before being sentenced to 15 years in prison for stomping a Fort Wayne, Ind., taxi driver to death -- was briefly hospitalized.
Police recovered drugs as well as three handguns and an assault rifle from the farm where Hovis reportedly lived with his girlfriend. He is being held without bail on charges including manufacturing methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine, possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, three counts of possession of marijuana and two counts of possession of paraphernalia.
