WATER VALLEY — A five-week “vacation” from the Yalobusha County jail will cost an Enid man an additional five years in prison.
Circuit Judge Jimmy McClure sentenced Ewell William Scott to five years for escape during a plea hearing Monday, Aug. 17, at the Water Valley courthouse.
Scott was also sentenced to two years for felony taking of a motor vehicle.
McClure ordered the sentences to run consecutively for a total of seven years, plus three years of post-release supervision after he is released from prison.
Scott’s hiatus started on April 1 after he escaped from the Yalobusha County Detention Center and stole a pickup on County Road 436.
Two days later, authorities picked up his trail when the stolen pickup was located in a barn in Tallahatchie County, near the railroad tracks at Enid.
For the next month, law enforcement officers from Panola, Tallahatchie, Grenada and Yalobusha counties stayed hot on his trail.
Numerous state agencies and K-9 officers from other jurisdictions joined the chase, but the elusive fugitive somehow managed to stay a step ahead.
The search effort would grow to include helicopters, high-tech drones fitted with night vision cameras, dogs and dozens of officers who deployed each time sightings of Scott were reported in southern Panola County and northern Tallahatchie County during the second week of April.
Officers reported Scott was able to use the terrain in the area to stay ahead of the dogs, even swimming the Yocona River several times one night.
Scott was finally captured on May 9 after a Tallahatchie County constable found him holed up in a junk pickup near Enid, just 150 yards from the lawman’s house, after a neighbor reported someone was lurking in the woods.
The constable reported Scott was reading a book when he found him and said Scott admitted he was tired of running.
Scott had been staying in the abandoned truck for several days and said he would walk down to Yocona River at night to catch fish.
The constable said Scott had a pair of gloves on his feet, likely to help avoid leaving tracks. Scott said the gloves also helped with the soreness of his feet, because he had been on them so much.
Scott has been held in the Yalobusha County jail since his capture and was indicted on the new charges in July.
