Escaped inmate captured in Bulloch County

Sheriff Kip Thomas said James Michael Self, 19, was found after he used a cell phone belonging to his mother.

Law enforcement traced the cell phone “ping” and Screven and Bulloch County officers found Self on a side road asleep in his grandfather’s Ford Windstar mini van.

He was taken into custody without incident.

Self, who was being held at the jail on a burglary charge, escaped Wednesday around 11:30 a.m. when an investigator and deputy took him back to his Fred Goss Road home to recover stolen items in the attic.

“They went to the house to recover some stuff he had stolen and a lady got between him and the deputies and he took off,” said Sheriff Kip Thomas.

Thomas said the woman was the escapee’s mother, but she is not under arrest.

“It (the mother's interference) wasn’t intentional,” said Thomas. “He just saw an opportunity and he took it.”

The nearby Madison County Middle School was placed on lockdown as a precaution as officers searched the area with the assistance of the state patrol, a canine unit and a helicopter.

Thomas said Self eluded searchers in the thick woods, waiting until the overnight hours to return to the home.

“He came in (the home) sometime between 12:30 and 1 a.m.,” Thomas said.

Once inside the home, he apparently got car keys, a cell phone and a debit card form a purse left downstairs and left in his grandfather’s mini van.

“We pinged the cell phone,” Thomas said, which alerted them to his exact location, where he had evidently pulled off the road and went to sleep.

Officers went to that location and took him into custody about 5:30 a.m. without incident.

Thomas went to Statesboro this morning and was on his way back with Self, who will now be charged with felony escape.

“He just made things a whole lot worse on himself,” Thomas said.

Thomas added that he’d like to thank Bulloch and Screven county law enforcement, as well as the state patrol, probation officers and the GBI.