Escaped prisoner David M. Watson II managed to elude law enforcement for six days, moving back and forth from drainage pipes in a wooded area in Jessup, drinking from puddles and eating from garbage cans, before he was discovered late Wednesday night, police said.

Watson, 28, a maximum-security inmate, was located around 9:40 p.m. Wednesday in a drainage pipe in the woods off Dorsey Run Road, about half a mile from Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center.

“He had been covering an area anywhere from one to two miles in either direction from the actual site from where the escape occurred,” Howard County Police Chief Gary L. Gardner said Thursday.

Gardner said search teams learned Watson traveled at least a mile in various directions over the course of his time on the run, based upon footprints and trails tracked by bloodhounds.

After being arrested Wednesday night, he was taken to the Howard County jail and charged with escape and assault, police said.

At a bail reviewing hearing Thursday, Howard County District Judge Mary C. Reese ordered that the hearing be postponed until May 12 so that Watson can undergo a competency evaluation, said T. Wayne Kirwan, a spokesman for the state’s attorney’s office.

Reese ordered Watson transferred from the Howard County detention center to the Perkins Hospital Center for the evaluation.

Kirwan said during the hearing that Watson told the judge he didn’t want to go to Perkins. Watson said that “they tried to cut off his head there,” said Kirwan, who attended the hearing.

Watson escaped Friday morning from the parking lot of Perkins while in the custody of two Wicomico County Detention Center corrections officers, who were transporting him to the hospital center for a psychiatric evaluation.

They secured him with leg restraints and handcuffs, which were secured to a chain waist belt that was secured with a keyed padlock, according to charging documents. When one of the corrections officers opened the doors to the transport van to let Watson out, he “forcefully pushed” the officer to the ground, the charging documents said.

Watson was later found without restraints, which Gardner said Watson removed while in the van. Handcuffs and a chain waist belt were found in the parking lot next to the van, but no leg shackles were located, the charging documents said.

Gardner said they do not believe Watson planned the escape in advance or had assistance from others.

Howard County police canvassed the Jessup area Friday and Saturday and handed out flyers to local businesses, using heat-seeking helicopters to search for him.

Howard County police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn said that “the large-scale search coordinated with all of the local partner agencies,” was suspended Saturday but that officers from Howard County continued to search the area, while U.S. marshals took the investigative lead and broadened the scope of the search outside Howard County.

Police received a tip Wednesday morning from an employee of a nearby company about a man wearing a hard hat and a safety vest in the 8200 block of Dorsey Run Road. The man ran away when he was spotted, and the employee called 911.

All day, bloodhounds, K9 units, tactical teams and law enforcement officers searched the area. Police found materials inside a small concrete drainage tunnel near Wednesday’s sighting, as well as shoe prints, but not Watson.

Late Wednesday, officers were rechecking the area using night-vision equipment when they found Watson inside the drainage pipe, about a few hundred yards from the sighting Wednesday morning.

“We appreciate what our law enforcement has done to secure this person. It certainly was a challenge for them,” said Howard County Executive Allan H. Kittleman.

Former Harford County Sheriff L. Jesse Bane said he was surprised Watson was found so close to where he had initially escaped, and that most escapees are found within 24 hours.

“I do find it interesting the he was in very close proximity. I don’t know how he was able to avoid apprehension,” said Bane, who spent 42 years in law enforcement and is now serving as the town administrator in Bel Air.

But Bane said he felt Howard County police handed the search appropriately. “I am convinced they did everything they possibly could.” Bane said, given that there was no early signs of Watson still in the area, most law enforcement agencies would have expanded the search.

Watson was serving a 106-year sentence in Delaware, where he was convicted of attempted murder after shooting into a police officer's home in 2012. He was transported last week to Perkins, Maryland's maximum-security mental hospital for a psychiatric evaluation before possible prosecution for similar alleged incidents in Maryland.

jkanderson@baltsun.com

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