A Connecticut fugitive who authorities believe passed through the Big Apple while he was on the lam has been captured in Georgia, ending a 10-day manhunt, officials said.
Jerry Mercado, who’d been serving time on burglary charges, was nabbed without incident at a Chevron gas station in Canton just after 4 p.m. on Wednesday, according to the US Marshals Service in Connecticut.
“We weren’t going to stop until he was found, he gave us a good run but in the end he lost,” said Brian O’Neill, a supervisor with the Marshals’ Violent Fugitive Task Force in Connecticut.
Mercado, 25, may have used public transit to travel south from New York during his failed bid for freedom, officials said.
Mercado was found by Canton cops when authorities acted on a tip from the Connecticut task force.
“Once returned to the state, escapee Mercado will be transported to the Northern Correctional Institution where he will be referred for placement on the agency’s highest level of supervision known as Administrative Segregation,” the Department of Correction said in a statement.
New Yorkers were on alert after reports emerged that Mercado, who fled Carl Robinson Correctional Facility on Sunday, may have been riding the city’s mass transit while attempting to evade suspicion.