Ah, Lubbock. We really know how to export our finest talent. Take local resident Kory Jolly, for example. He managed to turn a trip to New Mexico into a cross-country game of hide-and-seek that eventually ended with him in handcuffs on the other side of the Mississippi River.
The trouble started in the Village of Ruidoso, where local detectives responded to a “lost child” call that quickly spiraled into a horrific child sexual assault investigation. After combing through evidence at the scene, police pinned Jolly as their prime suspect. Naturally, when the Ruidoso police looked for him at his home address here in the Hub City, they found out our guy had already packed his bags. Because nothing screams “I have absolutely nothing to hide” quite like fleeing across multiple state lines.
Jolly apparently decided that West Texas didn’t offer enough hiding spots and booked it all the way to Tennessee. But if you’re going to try and outrun the law, maybe don’t create a geographic triangle that spans half the continental United States. He was tracked down and arrested on May 1, proving that his grand escape plan was about as effective as Lubbock’s road construction.
It turns out it takes a literal village—and a small army—to catch a Lubbock man on the lam. To finally bring Jolly into custody, it required the combined, coordinated efforts of the Ruidoso Police Department, the U.S. Marshal Service, the Lubbock Police Department, the Tennessee State Police, the Greene County Sheriff’s Office, and, just for good measure, the White Mountain Drug Task Force.
You really have to wonder: if Jolly had put half as much effort into being a decent human being as he did into forcing a six-agency law enforcement coalition to track his genius itinerary, would he still be sitting in a Greene County jail cell right now?
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