I woke up in a cold sweat from the nightmare I was having about escaping from The State Penitentiary, and this time when I ran...they shot me. I wake up in a dark cell by myself and realize I am still alive. As I sit on the edge of my bunk I start to recall what really happened to me. O crap! I did escape from Jackson State Penitentiary and had made it from Jackson all the way to Lansing just to get caught. We pulled up to Jackson State Penitentiary in a prison van and they told us to get into the lunch line before unpacking our property. They gave us a bunk number and sent us on our way. The lunch line was long and wrapped around the building outside. As I was standing there I thought I heard my name. Spinner but when I looked back toward the voice I did not recognize anyone and no one met my eyes with theres to acknowledge it had been them. Then I heard it again, this time very clearly. I jumped sideways and said , Yo, who said my name. Then one of my best friends and true road dogg from the streets, J. dogg popped of the line with a big smile and a hand out, like whats good homie. He was 16 years old and I was 17 years old. So how did we end up in the Big House so young? We kicked it about just that as we ate lunch and then went to our bunks for count. After the correctional officers did the count I went to get my property and they informed me that I was leaving the next morning. They said I was riding out first thing morning and I was not allowed to unpack any of my things. That made me mad and as I walked the big yard with my homeboy Jeremy we decided to escape and started planning in earnest. Jeremy had been there a minute and I just got there a few hours ago so he had some things, like timing, worked out. Jeremy and I had commit crimes together before so planning out an escape was not a stretch for our criminal mentality. Jeremy said that they did count every half hour, exactly on the half hour marks and that never changed. Jeremy said that it got dark the third count after dinner and that no one was allowed on the big yard at that time but we would act like we were going to the recreation building an ditch around the building to the big yard because there was no fence between the recreation building and the big yard. There was a pole about two feet outside the big yard thirty foot fence with razor wire, we had identified this as our target area while walking around the yard alone. I told him that getting over that razor wire at the top would be an issue, it was my job to point out issues and solve them. We decided that multiple lairs of clothes would help us not get sliced up by the very sharp razors that are coiled and unavoidable without armor. We could not walk out after count with our blankets to use for armor, trying to say we were going to the recreation building, that would not work so we went with the lairs of clothes. At dinner I stole a couple pepper shakers from the tables to put down after we got over the fence and the dogs were on us. Like I said we had done this before. We had on all our lairs of clothes and even though we were criminal vets already, we were still sweating and pooping a lot, knowing that the State Police Post was right down the road and we had no outside help for a ride. No problem, we had done this before. You see the no gun towers being manned was our golden ticket to freedom. That and the fact that we were really quite fearless, regardless of the pooping. My friends were going to all freak out when we popped up back in the hood, I thought, this would be epic. Hold up. Should we go back to the hood? Probably not, yo the cops will be waiting for us there. “We should go to Florida and hang out on the beach for a few months till everything calms down.” Jeremy said. “Right, but how will we get any money to get down to Florida without catching a new case. Walk away escape only carries five years but armed robbery, home invasion, and assaulting an officer while in the commission of felony all carried 20 to 40 years.” I said. So we decided to keep it clean and if we get caught we will just give up and eat the five years for the walk away escape. The C/Os did the third count from dinner and we headed straight out of the door to make our great escape, as we bailed outside we were going to cut round the building leading to the big yard fence area that we had decided was a good spot. No one was supposed to be on the phone after dark but another prisoner was on an outside phone and he would see us going the wrong way. Man, what do we do? Hope he doesn’t tell on us because we dont have time to wait for him to be done with his 15 minute phone call, we only have 30 minutes until next count. We discussed this while faking being on the phone ourselves. Did I mention it was January 1st 1996 and there was at least one foot of snow on the ground and I had big bulky cheap prison issued boots on. As soon as we heard the inmate start to talk on the phone we ran around the building hoping that the prisoner on the phone would just not say anything. Jeremy hit the fence first and I was right behind him on the fence, literally. He tried to get over the razor wire by trying to slowly pick his way through it but he got caught up, snagged by the jagged edges of the coiling wire. I was holding onto the fence under him about 25 feet in the air. I had no choice but to help him untangle himself from the fence. Which I did getting sliced up in the process and he got down and ran away. I was still on the wrong side of the fence and he ran off. Man. I was bloody from undoing him from the razor wire and I was bleeding from my hand profusely. I knew I could not make the same mistake Jeremy made because I had no one to help me if I was snagged. What to do? Time is ticking and they are coming for me. Over the loud speaker at this exact moment they announced Christian services were being held. O-yeah, thats right, I thought to myself, I found God. My first memory of life is actually a good one. I was having fun being pulled on a sled across the snow at a park across the street from my family’s home. If I recall correctly we had a nice new Trans Am and a customized full sized carpeted van. My dad worked at the Oldsmobile plant in downtown Lansing and my mom watched my older sister and me during the day. My sister was 5 year old, two years older than me, I was only three and life seemed great. What could possibly go wrong? I firmly gripped the part of the fence I could get my hands on, as close to the center as possible and tried to sling shot myself over the coiling razor wire down 30 feet to a plunge on the ground. Thanks be to God Almighty that razor wire caught me and I was hanging by a thread, by my extra clothes that I put on, and more importantly I was hanging on the other side of the fence. I quickly grabbed the fence and got down. I ran toward Jeremys footsteps and caught him shortly, he stopped and waited when he seen me coming, of course because I had the cigarettes. After I caught up to Jeremy I said, Hey man why did you leave me up there? And he said, Aw man I knew you would make it, you always do. We had done this before. It had been at least five minutes on the fence plus the minute we spent faking on the phone. We were running at full speed through a field and could see a big old barn all by itself. We headed there hid behind it and caught our breath. It had been now about ten minutes gone by and we had cleared the fence, time to put down pepper knowing that they would find my blood at the spot we jumped the fence and track our scent from the footsteps to that very location behind the barn. Next, why did the chicken cross the road? To lose the scent of the dog. So we army crawled to the road, it was dark but not pitch black dark. As far as we could tell no one knew we were gone yet...unless that dude on the phone told trying to get an early parole? We did not see or hear anything so we waited then ran across the street, dove to the ground and then we army crawled away from the road. I put down more pepper for the dogs that would be behind us shortly. We walked for a couple minutes and came across a small river or stream, maybe 20 or 30 feet across. When we stepped on the iced river it cracked. Getting wet was not a good idea in 30 degree weather but true to form from the fence, J. Dogg went first. He made it and I followed and made it as well. I placed more pepper on the ground and I was now out of it. If the cops have to wait until count to find us missing, follow us to the barn from the fence, follow us across the road in the dark, and go across the stream, with pepper in every spot. That should by us an hour or two if we are lucky. Let the man hunt begin, or continue, we had done these things before. But man it was cold, my hand was throbbing and still bleeding, and man I was tired already. My adrenaline dumps were wearing off. “Hope they dont come soon.” I thought. I tried to wrap my hand and stop the bleeding but ended up leaving my hand out in the cold without a bandage or glove so it could freeze. We had no choice but to keep running and after a couple minutes decided to cross the road back to the other side. So, why did the chicken cross the road back to the other side? Hoping to confuse the police or for the police to think that the dogs are confused from the pepper at each location and give up on a cold night. We continued to walk in the cold and thru a foot of heavy Michigan snow. As fate would have it the ground we walked on was farm land, we were walking fast off the side of the road so no one could see us. Farmland is dug in rows so that the dirt goes up and down. Every step I took was giving me blisters in my prison issued boots, never knowing with each step how far the ground was under the snow. With heavy tired legs and good amount of blood loss I was dizzy. We got tired of being tired and walked out onto the road after about an hour. As we walked along the road we tried to steal a car and a truck but farmers dont seem to have tilts on their steering wheels and that is the type of car we needed, as well as a screw driver to pop the ignition. Jeremy was good at this I knew if we could just find what we needed. We had done this before. But we could not find the right vehicle and pressed on for the first town we seen. Every time we seen headlights we would run to the side of the road and literally dive into unseen woods to avoid detection. Eventually we seen the lights of a small town and a sign that said we were entering into another county. We looked at each other and smiled as we shed our top lair of prison issued clothes by a tree before we walked into town in our civilian visitor clothes. Now it we were getting close to making it and all of the sudden I was not so cold and my hand stopped throbbing from the razor wire on the fence. As we walked toward the town lights we realized that it was a small town. All we could see was a motel and gas station. As we got into the town we seen a trailer park and immediately headed into it to find a car with a tilt and a screw driver. “Yeah, a screw driver.” I kept telling myself we had done this before. We started going through cars and we had lost track of time. It had been a few hours and we just needed to move fast. My guess was that it had been around 3 or 4 hours, we had covered a lot of ground, we never stopped moving knowing that they would have a hard time tracking us this far with those dogs. As we went thru cars Jeremy took one side of the road and I took the other. We had done this lots of times, running around in the middle of the night breaking in cars and such. Jeremy and I had committed about 50 felonies before this chance meeting in the penitentiary and had never been charged with any of it. Then like a bad omen as I was thinking about this I seen a lady on the phone looking at me out of a sliding glass door. I stood stark still hoping that she was not looking at me. Really? Now. Yes, she was looking right at me and then she ran. I could see her feet under the short curtain of the sliding glass window. She was really moving face back and forth. I said, Crap, J. Sessions we have to go now, a lady seen me going thru a car she had a phone and started running around. Man she was looking right at me. So we hid in between a few trees with a view of where we had been going thru cars. We wanted to make sure that she called the cops before ditching. Plus we were dead tired and needed to rest because we had no food or drink left. We had eaten our crackers and cheese and drank our water. So we sat in the freezing cold and watched as the cops did roll by...but just one. Dude, maybe they dont think it was us because she only seen one person, not two, and I look so young, not like an escaped prisoner. We waited until we were ready to cry from the pain of the cold and then said, Forget it, lets do this, its do or die time. No problem. We had done this before. This time we found some beer and cigarettes in a van. We tried to cerebrate with the beer but our bodies were more worried about a car with a tilt and a screw driver. “Flat head. Had to be flat head.” I kept telling myself. We were mainly looking for cars that possibly have a tilt steering column. As fate would have it I peered into the back window of a van, I was going to keep moving without checking the steering column but I seen a tool box. I said, “J. Dogg there is a tool box dude! He immediately went to check the passenger’s side door and I checked the driver’s side door. Both were unlocked and Jeremy jumped in the back to grab the right screw driver and I looked for money and... Smoking Joe Frazier the keys are in the ignition. This was it, jack pot! We looked into the window of the trailer we were in the driveway of and we could see those playing cards and drinking. I hope the drink is good and the music is on loud because we are taking off now. Hold our breath and turn the key. No one inside the window moved. Woooo. We backed out of the driveway, drove slowly away and as we drove out of the front entrance we passed a cop The cop did not turn around to follow us. Wow. We seen a sign to get on a highway fairly quickly, once we were on the highway we finally relaxed a little. Ok a lot, we made it! We lit a smoke, turned up the HEAT and turned the radio station from station to station as we discussed where we going now that it was a reality. We should definitely go to Florida and stay on the beach until we can find work. We had no identification, no money, food or gas. Also we had got away clean without adding an extra felony up to this point. We can go to Lansing then try and say we are paroled and need help to start over, that will help us hustle us up a couple hundred dollars. As fate would have it at that exact time we seen a sign that said Lansing. So we followed the signs to Lansing and went to my girlfriend’s house Glenda and I threw rocks at the window of her bedroom. It was about 3:30 am. No one answered the window so we quickly walked back to the van and jumped in. If someone called the cops around here they would be all over us. Im sure they had been alerted of our escape and were waiting for us because they knew us. We had done this before. We hit up a couple more places but could not find anyone willing to let us in at that hour. As we drove away from Motel 6 in downtown Lansing a police car turned sharp to follow us. We hit the corner hard and as the van turned it went onto just two wheels. “O crap we are going to crash and be caught”, I thought. But we landed hard back on all four and bounced. Bang! We hit a couple more corners and parked to bail but when we shut the engine off and killed the headlights there was no cop behind us. Tick tock, tick tock, no cop. After ten minutes we started the van and proceeded. Finally one of Jeremys friends was home and let us in. We slept in the utility room to avoid his parent detection when they got up for work and we told him not to tell anyone we were there because we did not want to get in trouble, being fresh parolees and all. We woke up the next day smoked a fat one and broke down telling J. Dogg’s friend that what he suspected was right, we had escaped, but we did not come right out and say it. We just nodded and asked him to keep it low. He went to school and on the way out of the door he asked us to be gone by the time his parents came home from work. No problem brother thanks a lot. We raided the fridge and took showers. Then we started calling people that we could remember their number. Finally someone answered and I began to explain to her how we just got paroled and how we needed a ride and I was trying to do good this time, I just needed some help. I told her to come alone and I think that raised red flags, along with the fact Jeremy and I were paroled at the same time. We met her at the store and she had two people we knew, or rather who knew us, in the car. Crap! We have no choice but to get in or walk because we left our vehicle on the other side of the city. We had abandoned our van because they would be looking for it and we would not pick it back up unless it was to head out of town. We were tired...we got in the car. We tried to lie and say we were on parole but people were obviously suspicious, this made us nervous. We smoked a fat one and hung out by the Grand River. Then the girl driving was like, I got to go to work, Where am I taking you to drop you off. One of the other girls had asked me about Glenda, which was the first place I went to throw rocks at the window. I told this girl I had went to Glenda’s house in Holt, and this girl said Glenda had moved to the South Side of Lansing. I said to take us there and they did. J. Dogg did not really want to go there because the cops knew she had been my girlfriend. Also J. Dogg was from The South Side so the police would be staked out by now; but neither did he have a better idea. I tried hard to get a few dollars from the girl that picked me up but it was a no go until she got paid next week, she said. We went to Glenda’s, she let us in and our ride left us on foot from there. We were hanging out in Glenda’s room a couple hours resting when Jeremy said, “Detectives.” I said, “No way man, stop playing.” He was not playing detectives were in the driveway. We recognized them detective Foot and detective Stacy. They knocked on the door and we climbed out the second story window onto the high porch rough and jumped down into the snow. We ran east in the snow toward the backside of the block. We were approaching the other side when a cop pulled up in an unmarked car jumped out and pulled his pistol. The cop aimed the pistol right at us and said to get down or he would shoot; we looked at each other and ran. The cop decided to hold his position instead of chase us or shoot us as he knew the other twenty cops had a perimeter around the entire block off Washington on the South Side. J. Dogg and I ran though the middle of the block, south, jumping fences and tried to cross the road west but there was always cop cars moving slow, marked and unmarked. You could tell by how they were driving that they were looking for us and the other cop had said,”Stop or I will shot.” We stopped behind a shed and decided to slit up because it would split the cops up. We would meet back at our vehicle if we made it, at mid-night, no exceptions. I ran back north and he the way we had been running, south. I could not get off the block so I tried to go back to Glenda’s house thinking the cops would chase J. Dogg the other way and never suspect me going back to the house we ran from. I ran out of gas right before I got back to the house and the cops surrounded me as I fell to the snow they jumped on me with their knees in my back shoving my face into the snow talking about, “I told you we would have a prison cell for you when you grew up and we will be waiting for you when you get out next time too.” I was born February 19th 1978 to my Mom, Vivian, and my Dad, Bud. They were very young and already had my sister Billie Joe was two years old and around the time I she was 5 my parents split permanently. From what I can gather my Dad lost his job then went out with his bro’s all time and my mom found affection somewhere else. All I really remember is my Mom asking me if I wanted to go with my Dad or stay with my Mom. I stayed with my Mom in Lansing, MI for a couple years. We lived a few places in Lansing including by the railroad tracks in downtown Eastside Lansing, on Hill Street. I was five years old and walked to kindergarten at Begum Elementary school. My mom had another baby, my sister Andrea and decided that it was my Dads turn to watch Billie Joe and me, so she dropped us off to my Dad who had moved to Chattanooga TN and she went to Colorado to find Andreas Dad. From what I can gather my dad did not know the move was permanent. As a result six months later we had to move back to Michigan with my Grandpa, my dad’s father in Delhi Manor Trailer Park. Almost immediately after moving my dad met his new wife, Lisa. They had two babies back to back, my young bro’s that I would never really get to know, Steve and Joe. I remember moving a lot, I mean a lot. I remember were on Star Street off Reo by the Reo Projects, Pleasant View Elementary when my mom came back to Lansing around the time I was in the 4th grade. She took my Dad to court and was granted visitation rights. My Dad and I never were close because he had a new wife and two new babies, plus we were poor. The situation was such that my older sister had ran away to foster care long ago. I was a bad kid, like break in your house and beat up other kids in school bad. I caught my first Assault and Battery with Joe E. at age eleven, right after my dad moved to Rose Garden Apartments in Holt, MI. This girl’s older brother came at me with a baseball bat, so I ran. Joe and I were hanging out at the entrance of the 14 apartment complex with one way in and one way out. Then this sixteen year old dude that had came at me with a bat came walking thru. I walked up to him and asked if he wanted to fight now that he did not have a bat, I had a knife but did not show it to him. He said he did not want to fight, but Joe E. was all hyped up and jumped on his back. It was on, I jumped in and we beat him down. Afterward the dude ran off and then the cops showed up. As a result of such behavior my Dad had to whoop me a lot, which he did. A few times it went too far and my school called protective services and then my Mom did so as well. My Mom was not ready to keep me so I became a ward of the state at eleven years old, never to look back, a product of the State of Michigan.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 18:25:48 +0000
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