Friday, May 29, 2009

Woman Holds Fugitive At Gunpoint Awaiting Police In Maryville

Robert L. Wilson is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

MARYVILLE - Except for reportedly leaving police a map to where he was going and seeking refuge at a home where there was a protective mother with a 9 mm gun, Brian Keith Rummage has this fugitive thing figured out.

Rummage, 19, who walked away from a work release program in Lawrence County on April 6 and is thought to have been in possession of a vehicle stolen in Maury County within the past few days, was arrested Thursday morning in Maryville as a friend's mother held him at gunpoint.

Officers of the Blount County Sheriff's Office and the Maryville Police Department converged on a home on Dockery Drive about 9:30 a.m. after getting a report that a man wanted in Maury County was being detained at gunpoint.

Rummage, of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., was arrested there without incident.

The suspect was convicted on forgery and check charges in Lawrence County and had been on a minimum security work release program with the county's Parks and Recreation Department, according to Pat Daughtry of the U.S. Marshals Service there.

Detective Terry Chandler of the Maury County Sheriff's Department said Thursday he had been investigating the theft of a Jeep in Columbia.

He said the vehicle was found abandoned and out of gas several exits west of Knoxville on I-40. When the owner was located and went to his vehicle, he found a printout from Mapquest.com.

The map indicated the address from which the suspect had departed and listed the Dockery Drive address in Maryville as the destination.

Chandler said he found a phone number for the address and called, speaking to Carrie Ryan, whose daughter recently had become acquainted with Rummage.

Chandler asked if there was a Damian there; Damian is a name Rummage has used in the past.

"I said, 'I'm looking right at him,' " Ryan said, adding that he had been there since Wednesday, when he called her daughter, an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, wanting to get away from his Middle Tennessee home after a fight with his sister.

Learning that Rummage was wanted, Ryan said she asked the detective if she could hold the visitor at gunpoint until authorities could get there. The officer said yes.

Ryan retrieved her 9 mm Ruger from a bedroom drawer.

Ryan said she never actually pointed the gun at Rummage, keeping the muzzle pointed toward the floor. But she did tell him, "If you run, I will shoot you."

She says she did not know whether Rummage might try to arm himself with a knife and take her and her daughter, who prefers to remain unidentified, hostage or possibly harm them. And she did not want him loose in society.

Awaiting the arrival of local authorities, who were called by Chandler on one line as he talked to Ryan on another, Ryan said she told Rummage, "You need to be a man and pay your dues."

Neither Ryan nor Rummage face any charges in Blount County, according to Sheriff Jim Berrong.