ELKINS, W.Va. — The manhunt that consumed law enforcement in rural Randolph County Wednesday morning began with an “emergency medical issue.”
Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety Assistant Secretary Lawrence Messina said Mark McAtee, 22, originally from Lost Creek in Harrison County, was taken from Huttonsville Correctional Facility to Davis Medical Center in Elkins for an “unscheduled health issue.”
It was then, according to Messina, that McAtee overpowered his Correction’s Officer. McAtee, serving between one and fifteen years in prison for a non-violent burglary conviction, took his CO’s car keys and drove off in a 2005 light blue Ford Taurus shortly after 3 am.
Elkins Police responded to the scene and proceeded to monitor the hospital. Businesses in downtown Elkins that were open during the overnight hours went on lock down. Law enforcement had reason to suspect that McAtee had a home-made weapon–possibly a “shiv.”
Around 6 am, police discovered the correctional officer’s vehicle near a campground in a rural portion of Randolph County just off of U.S. Rt. 33 at Revelle’s River Resort.
By 9 am, businesses in Elkins were able to resume normal operation.
Less than an hour later, a search party consisting of officers from the Elkins Police Department, Randolph County Sheriff’s Department, the West Virginia State Police, the U.S. Marshal’s Service, and the Department of Corrections discovered McAtee hiding just “several hundred feet” from the vehicle.
Messina said he didn’t know whether or not McAtee surrendered peacefully, but said no injuries were reported during the arrest.
Additionally, the Correction’s Officer injured in the initial alleged incident has been released from a local hospital.
McAtee is in Tygart’s Valley Regional Jail, but he is unlikely to be there for very long.
Messina said standard procedure following an escape is to move the inmate to the maximum security Mt. Olive Correctional Facility while awaiting inmate reclassification and the filing of new charges in Randolph County Circuit Court.