Good News .. Oh no

KINGSLAND - Camden County sheriff's deputies arrested a suspect in a South Carolina kidnapping when they stopped a white Ford Bronco southbound on Interstate 95, the Sheriff's Office said in a prepared release. Deputies began looking for the vehicle after receiving an alert that Richard Faust, 30, of Summerville, S.C., was wanted in the slaying of two people in South Carolina.

Deputies spotted a vehicle matching the description southbound on I-95 about 3:30 a.m. and tried to stop it, but the driver continued down the highway, the release said. After traveling about 2 miles, the vehicle exited I-95 at Exit 7 and the driver fled into woods, Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. William Terrell said.

"It was not a chase. He never really got up to speed," Terrell said.

Officers from the Kingsland Police Department and Georgia State Patrol surrounded the woods and brought in bloodhounds to search the woods, the release said. "They set up a really tight perimeter knowing he was in there. There was no way anyone could get past them," Terrell said.

Sheriff's deputies arrested Faust about 6 a.m. and took him for a medical examination before he was jailed, Terrell said. "He didn't have any shoes. His feet were all torn up from running through the woods," Terrell said. Georgia officers subsequently learned no one had been slain in the incident for which Faust was sought, he said.

Instead, South Carolina officers said, Faust's former girlfriend had been assaulted at her home and forced into the trunk of her car, the release said. The woman's kidnapper drove to the home of a friend who owns the white Bronco, the release said.
The man then kidnapped the friend and took his Bronco, but later released him at an I-95 rest area just inside Georgia, Terrell said. South Carolina officers freed the woman from the trunk of her car, officials said.

The second kidnap victim called the Port Wentworth Police Department who put out an alert about the stolen Bronco, investigators said. Officers in Camden County found a .20-gauge shotgun and $8,400 in the Bronco, Terrell said.

Faust is charged in Georgia with possession of stolen property, fleeing and attempting to elude and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and faces more serious charges in South Carolina, the release said. He was denied bail Thursday and is being held in the Camden County jail, Terrell said.

gordon.jackson@jacksonville.com
( must of pained him to print this story )