Law officers recapture accused in Georgia sheriff's death

By Rich McKay

ATLANTA (Reuters) - A prisoner who escaped from a prison van in rural Georgia on Tuesday was recaptured following a manhunt involving more than 100 local, state and federal officers, aided by dogs and helicopters, a state law enforcement agency said.

Jim Edward Lowery, 35, charged with killing a sheriff, was being moved from one jail to another in southeast Georgia when he managed to remove his leg shackles and used them to break a window in the van.

He then ran away still in handcuffs and an orange jail jumpsuit, officials said. A deputy pursued Lowery into the woods but lost sight of him. The handcuffs were later found by a roadside.

After a nearly 12-hour search, an aviation unit spotted Lowery near the Laurens County Jail, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a news release. He was taken into custody without incident, it said.

Lowery is waiting to be tried for the murder of Montgomery County Sheriff Ladson O’Connor and aggravated assault against police officers, the state agency said.

O’Connor died in a car crash on June 16 during a high-speed chase involving Lowery, a burglary suspect who allegedly shot at the pursuing officers, officials said.

Two convicted murderers escaped from a maximum security prison in upstate New York earlier this year. They were aided by a prison employee who was recently sentenced to up to seven years in prison. After a three week search one of the fugitives was fatally shot by a federal agent and the other was caught a couple of days later.

(Additional reporting by Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Eric Walsh and Simon Cameron-Moore)