Spree spanning three states lands four in police custody

After a spree that police say spanned three states, involved a prison break, a vicious motel beating, human bite marks and a woman throwing herself from a moving car during a police chase, four South Carolina residents landed in police custody Monday.

It started at the Virginia House Inn, a motel in Marion, Va., where police were called Friday morning by a badly beaten man who’d been unconscious for more than 12 hours in a pool of his own blood, according to Marion Police Officer April Morgan.

Around 10:15 Friday morning, motel workers stopped by to clean his room and found it “completely trashed” and a man lying on the floor between the beds, Morgan said. Michael Collins, 29, of Lancaster, S.C., told officers that he woke up to find his second cousin strangling him “around dark-time” Thursday and he remembered nothing else.

“He was beaten nearly to death,” Morgan said. “He was intended to be killed – he’d been strangled, bitten. He was black and blue from his head to his toes.”

He had a broken nose and human bite marks on his cheek and back, carpet burns across his body and both eyes were swollen shut. His cousin, Chucky James Elmore Jr., and the girlfriends of both men, who were traveling with them, were nowhere to be found, Morgan said. Police wanted Elmore on an attempted murder charge.

Morgan recounted the events over the next three days with astonishment.

“You really can’t make this stuff up,” she said, detailing it like this:

Authorities rushed Collins to the hospital, where he called his grandmother in South Carolina. Unbeknownst to him, South Carolina police had linked him to Elmore’s escape from a minimum security prison there, and talked with his grandmother about his whereabouts. She turned him in, Morgan said.

As soon as he was released from the hospital, he was arrested and charged as a fugitive from justice awaiting extradition to South Carolina.

But the other three – Elmore, his girlfriend, Tina Mackey, 29, and Collins’ girlfriend, Melissa White, 32 – were still on the lam.

Morgan continued that last Wednesday Elmore escaped from the minimum security prison in Rock Hill, S.C., where he was serving eight years for grand larceny. Collins said that Mackey asked him and his girlfriend to tag along on their vacation to the mountains of Virginia. Collins insisted he merely thought his cousin was released early.

Then, in Marion, Collins overheard a phone conversation during which Elmore alluded to his escape from jail and inquired about buying a gun. Elmore said something about using Collins’ identification, followed by, “I’m not going back to prison.”

Evidently, that scared Collins, who then made up a story about buying bus tickets home to check on a sick relative.

Morgan said Elmore must have gotten suspicious. A cab pulled up outside the motel, and cabs in Marion are often retired police cars with signs on top that look something like lights. Elmore got spooked, Morgan said. That’s when police believe the beating took place, she said.

Marion police, having no idea where the trio might be, called in the U.S. Marshals Service for help. 

Meanwhile, the three evidently made their way to Kingsport, where they were finally caught. Mackey called her mother in South Carolina, to say that Elmore beat her up, Morgan said. Her mother called police and told them the name of the motel where the three were staying. Officers rushed to the West Side Inn around 5:45 p.m. Monday, and found Elmore, Mackey and White piled in Mackey’s blue Mercury Sable in the parking lot, according to a news release from the Kingsport Police Department. They took off and a chase ensued. At some point along the way, as the car rolled up to an intersection, White – who police say might have been held against her will – jumped from the back seat, Morgan said. But the car charged on, with police in pursuit. White was later found and arrested, the release states.

There was a crash at the intersection of North John B. Dennis Highway and Lincoln Street, the details of which were unclear late Monday, but both of the car’s remaining occupants, Mackey and Elmore, were injured.

White was being held late Monday at the Kingsport Justice Center. Mackey and Elmore were both at Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport, where they were treated for injuries sustained in the crash, according to the news release.

Collins was being held Monday night at Southwest Virginia Regional Jail in Abingdon, Morgan said.

All four were charged as fugitives from justice with additional charges pending extradition to South Carolina and Virginia.

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