Elliot, who said he had been planning the escape for months, told the Freep that layered white thermals underneath his blue jail uniform so he could blend into the snowy terrain outside. He even had white shoes, white gloves and a white ski mask. Once outside, he ripped off the prison suit, dived into the snow, crawled to a fence and went under it.
Elliot said it took at least 30 minutes to escape and another hour to run to the city of Ionia. He said he jumped in the snow every time he saw a car.
Once in Ionia, Elliot started looking for a running car to steal. Armed with a box cutter and hammer he found along his journey, Elliot approached a woman at her vehicle and said “Hey, move over.” Elliot jumped into the back seat of the woman’s red Jeep and told her he just escaped from prison.
“I assured her all the way there that I wasn’t going to do her any harm,” he said. “All I wanted to do was just get away.”
The woman drove Elliot to a gas station some 100 miles south near Middlebury in Elkhart County, Ind., where he took her keys and went to change into dry clothes he found inside the woman’s vehicle. Meanwhile, the woman, who had a cellphone concealed in her pocket, locked herself in a bathroom and called 911. Elliot realized his luck might be changing, so he got back into the Jeep and started to leave.
“And then as I’m pulling away I seen the cops come,” he said.
Elliot drove the Jeep to nearby Shipshewana, where he abandoned the vehicle. He then went to a factory in La Porte where he stole another vehicle. After being notified of the stolen vehicle, a deputy on duty saw Elliot “within a few seconds” and initiated a traffic stop. Elliot tried to run, but he was eventually captured and taken back to the La Porte County Jail.