Fugitive Yancey found, caught in Belize
- 9/23/09
- Categorized in: DeKalb News
Federal agents arrested former DeKalb County sheriff’s deputy Derrick Yancey – charged with the murder of his wife and a day laborer – in the Central American country of Belize over the weekend, ending a nearly six-month, international manhunt for the fugitive.
State Department special agents found Yancey relaxing in a bar in the small town of Punta Gorda, a coastal village on the Caribbean Sea, said Jeffrey Mann, DeKalb County’s chief deputy sheriff. Yancey is being kept inside a Belize jail, and DeKalb County officers were headed to the country Sept. 21 to bring him back to United States.
Police said they were led Yancey by an unnamed tipster who provided on Sept. 10 the Sheriff’s Department with information related to a telephone number Yancey was using, Mann said. The U.S. Marshals Service and the State Department narrowed the phone’s location to Punta Gorda.
Yancey was last known to be headed toward the Los Angeles area after he fled his home on April 4. Yancey had been living in house arrest after he was released on bond following his arrest for the murder of his wife and a day laborer in his Stone Mountain home in August 2008.
Mann said police were unsure how Yancey traveled to Central America and why he chose Belize, though he was fluent in Spanish. He called the capture an “unparalleled and seamless attack” on Yancey.
“We always catch who we’re looking for eventually,” he said.
The man police arrested identified himself as Yancey, and police await confirmation of his fingerprint analysis, Mann said.
