FUGITIVE

The current life and times of a sleepy seaside town:

http://www.sowal.com/bb/all-about-sowal ... post604452

Explain police and military escorted bus trips to your 5 year old. He actually is handling it well.

 

Events like these make people appreciate what they have. Hope you arent in lock down much longer. Let us know the outcome

 

Well, it's over. :|

Armed fugitive dead after two-day manhunt - The News Herald

Quote:
Matheos S. Pitikas, a 24-year-old fugitive from Texas who had eluded local lawmen since firing on them on Friday, shot and killed himself on Sunday in the back yard of a home as deputies closed in, according to the Walton County Sheriff's Office.

“There were three ways this was going to end: He was going to kill himself, we were going to kill him or he was going to go to jail. He chose option one,” Walton County Sheriff Michael Adkinson said.

Walton and Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputies were closing in on Pitikas in a Point Washington area neighborhood on Choctawhatchee Bay, near where he had fled authorities two days earlier. At about noon Sunday, he walked through the yard of a home on Oak Avenue, but stopped in his tracks when he spotted a deputy.

The residents of the home were packing up to leave when one of them saw Pitikas on the side of the house.

“We locked eyes, then I started screaming, ‘That’s him,’ and ran inside to call 911,” said a woman who identified herself as Sondra. She and her husband, Gerald, asked not to be identified by last name after hearing rumors that Pitikas had family in the area.

Minutes later, “five or six deputies popped up on him all of a sudden,” said Adkinson, who added that several “unmarked deputies” had been in the area since Friday.

The deputies chased Pitikas through the yard. He ran to the back yard and behind a shed, where he shot himself.

“I heard one gunshot and that was it,” Gerald said.

Pitikas had one round left in his 9 mm semi-automatic and he used it on himself, Adkinson said.

The fugitive’s suicide ended a manhunt that had begun about 48 hours earlier. At about 12:30 p.m. Friday afternoon near the Whale’s Tail restaurant in Miramar Beach, a deputy was approaching a blue pickup truck when the driver fired shots at the deputy as he sped off east on Scenic Gulf Drive, according to a witness.

The witness said he later saw the truck race back west on the beachfront road with deputies in pursuit.

The Sheriff’s Office said Pitikas fired at deputies during the chase and after he crashed his truck at the corner of County Road 283 and Chrysler Avenue before he ran into the woods in Point Washington. It was unclear Sunday evening whether the 9 mm Pitikas used to take his life was the same gun used Friday. Read a witness account: 'That stainless steel pistol in his hand did a number on me' »

Pitikas’ body is on its way to the Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy. Deputies searched vacant homes in the area after the incident in order to determine where Pitikas had spent the last two days.

Agencies statewide and across three counties then launched what is being called the largest manhunt in Walton County history. But Pitikas eluded lawmen for almost 48 hours. 'Like something out of a movie': Read the story, see photos and watch video »

Pitikas was wanted by the FBI and Houston Police Department after allegedly robbing a Chase Bank in the Houston suburb where he had apparently grown up, according to the South Belt-Ellington Leader. A July 30 article stated that Pitikas had escaped on foot and used three-foot high underground drainage pipes to elude capture.

A police officer spotted Pitikas in the pipe and fired at him before Pitikas crawled into the pipe and escaped.

 

Good riddance to bad trash -- I also liked the local news thread you linked to.

 

A poignant follow-up:

'Looking into the eyes of a dead man': Witness recalls end of manhunt | wife, home, arrived - News - The News Herald

By CHICK HUETTEL


Quote:
On Sunday, when my wife and I arrived home from church, we heard yelling:

“Get down! Get down or we will shoot!”

It was the voices of deputies.

It was happening all over again within three days. So I pushed my wife inside the house, put on my old police revolver and waited outside.

Then came a gunshot.

The hunted fugitive had been spending his evenings hidden somewhere near our home but unable to move because of the alert from the sheriff’s department. The next day, neighbors were complaining the sheriff moved the search cars and teams out of the vicinity too fast. Yet, unknown to our residents, the officers lay hidden about the area.

I waited awhile, then squad cars came zooming past. One stopped for me as I stood in the road. I recognized him. His words were powerful:

“It’s all over.”

Matheos Pitikas, age 24, had been sighted a block from our home on the move by a deputy and then some residents. He had been holed up deep in the woods or in a shed.

The one shot was heard when he was cornered by a dog and approaching officers. Pitikas had one bullet left in his automatic, and that bullet was destined for his head. Read 'Surrounded, fugitive kills self in Walton' »

Gerald Wynn and his wife, neighbors of mine down the street, saw him in their yard. Sondra was out on the porch and yelled, “There he is!”

Matheos, with no shirt and only shorts, was ripped to pieces by the scrub brushes he had been trying to use for cover during his desperate days. His flesh had been torn by brambles and stinging palmettos, plus the agony of being barefooted, and he was now facing doom. Desperately he was trying to work his way along a fence line. The horror of surviving with no shoes, later on, went even deeper into my psyche.

But his suffering was for naught. The forces were closing in.

And there, behind a tin outbuilding, surrounded, his mind must have spun beyond our capacity: All was lost.

Perhaps his reasoning, according to an officer on scene, was that he was not sure if he had killed a deputy in the vehicle pursuit or while firing at them when his truck came crashing in a field off Bay Drive.

Why, he probably wondered, was his life to end someplace he never envisioned, somewhere foreign and in circumstances beyond his imagination? Was it better to end everything quickly, rather than be captured and wait for the day for the State of Florida to inject a needle into his arm - the most likely penalty if he killed someone in his wild shooting spree?

It must have seemed hopeless.

Hearing the lawmen’s voices and the wail of sirens, exhausted from dehydration and chewed alive from insects and uncaring thorns, the bank robber placed the 9 millimeter automatic to his head.

He had one bullet left.

Matheos probably said some words that were special to himself, and pulled the trigger.

That “bang” was what my wife and I heard. The ending of a life.

It was over. Our neighborhood was back to some quiet. No, not normal. It would not be normal for years to come. The fragility of hideous danger, ultimately the death of a stranger who had come crashing into our hamlet would no doubt haunt us.

Pitikas decided his fate. Thankfully, a different outcome that could have ruined the lives of our deputies and their families was averted. His reckless and uncaring shooting at officers and possibly striking an unknowing Walton resident was his survival mentality.

Matheos had a violent past, but he had one redeeming value. He never burst into a home and took hostages in our neighborhood. Perhaps he knew we had been so alerted that had he tried to enter a home, he would have met a person determined to defend his or her family. That we will never know.

I talked to our sheriff after the encounter on the road. He was not happy about the outcome. He had hoped for an apprehension.

“Chick, a life lost, no matter the situation, is horrific. He was so young… what a waste. We have to thank God for the safety of these people in the neighborhood. I know I will at church next time,” he told me afterwards.

I stood there near the metal death shed. I was relieved, but so wrapped up in emotion because of the gruesome days. Being shot at, meeting the suspect face to face, having my pistol on my side and next to my bed, wondering whenever I opened a door to my tool room, studio or car, even what awaited me around the corner of my house all wore on me.

I greeted the other officers whom I had the privilege to meet during those horrendous days. What great men, but they, too, were quiet. It was no time for celebration.

I walked back home down our sand road, behind me were flashing lights and squawking radios from the squad cars. I wanted to be alone. I can say honestly I downed three beers quickly as I sat on my porch overlooking the bay.

I had experienced this stuff while on Memphis Police Department, but it made no difference.

It never makes any difference.

You never can lose the feeling of encountering a violent event.

I was hot and sweaty wet. A slow-moving barge went by and two sparrows bathed in the birdbath. I went deep inside myself. The men on the barge never knew of the events and the small birds splashing seemed even less caring.

I found myself praying and giving thanks for the safety of our officers, my neighbors, and yes, even for Matheos Pitikas.

What events in his short life led me to meeting him but hours before one never knows, yet when we looked at each other, I never knew I was looking into the eyes of a dead man.



I can assure you that there really are not too many here rejoicing in this young man's death. As someone else posted on our local blog, SoWal:

"No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
~John Donne

 

At the risk of quoting Rush Limbaugh, ditto.