Clayton News Daily

By Ed Brock

Two accused murderers who broke out of Clayton County jail in November have been captured in Baltimore, Md.

Shawn Stanley Gilreath, 28, and Floyd Wayne Williams, 25, were arrested in Baltimore in connection with a bank robbery report on Friday and today Clayton County Sheriff's Office investigators will go there to interview the two, according to Chief Deputy Shelby Foles.

"What was reported was that when they were captured they had handguns and AK-47 assault rifles," Foles said.

Gilreath and Williams escaped together on Nov. 18 after forcing their way through a security screen in an exercise yard in the jail, climbing the perimeter fence and riding off in a waiting car. Foles said he did not yet have information on why the two were in Baltimore or who else may have been with them.

Williams, from Union City, has been charged with murder in the shooting death of 16-month-old Jose Arias and 48-year-old Alejandro Gutierrez in October 2001. He is also the half-brother of Michael Hutson, 30, who was arrested along with another man in April of the same year in connection with a home invasion at the same home and during which the robbers held a gun to Arias' head.

Gilreath is believed to be the mastermind behind the 1996 killing of 69-year-old Edwin Levi McCollum, a clerk at the now closed Bear Paw Army-Navy Store on Tara Boulevard in Jonesboro. Gilreath possibly had connections to white supremacist groups, according to published reports from the time of his arrest.

Both men have now been charged with escape as well. Members of the Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force, the U.S. Marshal's Office and other law enforcement agencies on the eastern seaboard assisted in the search for the two men.