Zanesville, OH-
The Muskingum County Sheriff’s Office has suspect Shawn Lee Williamson in custody. He has an active warrant for a parole violation.
Yesterday, around 2:55 pm in Zanesville, Sheriff Lutz says a detective from the sheriff’s office noticed a stolen red Mercedes, driven by Williamson, traveling at a high rate of speed on SR 146 at Richards Road. A pursuit ensued into the Philo/Duncan Falls area where he crashed the Mercedes in a creek around Irish Ridge Road and fled on foot and stole another vehicle off SR 555. He crashed again and was seen with a gun in his possession that he held to his head multiple times before running into the woods on foot. The sheriff’s office continued the search into the night with assistance from a helicopter from the State Highway Patrol.
“At approximately 7:55 last night, we started getting some more calls from our citizens in the area of seeing him. Through tracking those calls, along with some assistance from the highway state patrol, we began to narrow down the search for him. We also had some help from some of our citizens and some utility vehicles and at 10:45 pm we took him into custody,” Sheriff Matt Lutz said.
The gun was not recovered from the scene. The K-9 unit was able to bring Williamson down and he suffered some bite injuries and was transported to the hospital. He is on suicide watch while they monitor his injuries and then will be released back to jail. Sheriff Lutz told us that it was the community that really stepped up in this case.
“We’re very fortunate we get the support that we do from our citizens. Without them feeling uneasy and noticing something different, something strange and something weird or something suspicious last night, if they wouldn’t have called us, I’m sure we wouldn’t have gotten him as quickly as we did.”
Williamson will be charged with breaking & entering, theft of a motor vehicle, failure to comply, having weapons while under disability, tampering with evidence, and two charges of resisting arrest. Also assisting on the case was the South Zanesville Police Department including Chief Ross and Washington Township Fire Department and other local village police chiefs.
