UPDATE: According to the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office, suspect Tony Lamar White was captured by highway patrol officers in Richmond, Kentucky, Tuesday evening. No details of the arrest were immediately available.
Calhoun County Sheriff Matthew Wade says a suspect on Monday targeted an elderly woman, following her from store to store, and then to her home on rural Choccolocco Road where he attacked her, put her in the trunk of a car and took her to his home in Anniston.
Law enforcement officers were looking in force Tuesday afternoon for the identified suspect, Tony Lamar White, 47, of Anniston. Wade believes the 75-year-old woman was targeted because of her age, and the belief that she would be more easily subdued and controlled.
That a senior was the target is all the more troubling, given the suspect’s job: White is a certified nursing assistant who sat with elderly patients, Wade said.
The sheriff said a 911 call came Monday afternoon from the family of a missing woman. They’d found items scattered in her yard and home — keys and phone on a bed, groceries and her glasses outside.
“How we went from that to finding her in six hours,” Wade said, is nothing short of a miracle.
Hundreds of people came together to search. Neighboring law enforcement agencies, including the Oxford Police Department’s East Alabama Metro Crime Center, brought essential technology to bear in the search for the woman, someone Wade said they all know well.
She’s ‘a difference-maker’ in community
The Gadsden Times is not naming the woman at this time because she is a surviving victim of a crime and hasn’t given her express permission. But authorities said she is known in her community because of the service she’s given to it.
“She’s a difference-maker,” Wade said of the woman, who worked as a first responder in her career. Oxford Police Chief Bill Partridge said he’s known her for 30 years.
Wade said while he took pride that law enforcement agencies came together to find her alive, he was angry at what happened to her. Using security camera footage from the stores where she shopped at Monday, investigators were able to identify a suspect vehicle.
“He followed her from the grocery store to another store, and to another store,” Wade said. “Then he followed her home.”
Investigators were able to come up with a suspect and addresses from the vehicle, Wade said. After they went to one address searching for White, the sheriff said, a family member called White’s ex-wife, who then called her former husband.
“What did you do?” she asked, inadvertently tipping off White, Wade said.
Investigators believe he fled, and said Tuesday afternoon he might be traveling in a silver 2006 Chrysler 300, tag No. 11JA702.
When a tactical team went into White’s residence on South Wilmer Street in the downtown Anniston area, they didn’t find him — but they found the woman, bound with duct tape, in a closet.
Wade said he couldn’t imagine what she was feeling at the time she was found. “She thought she was doing to die,” he said.
He said the suspect had a knife, and the woman suffered lacerations in the incident.
Wade said after the traumatic experience the woman went through, investigators have not gotten all details of the incident from her — but he believes there may be much more to this story than a single incident.
Similar incidents?
“People don’t just wake up and go into someone’s home and kidnap them,” Wade said Tuesday during a press conference.
Wade said the manner of the kidnapping Monday is similar to a pair of incidents in the area in 2012 and 2013 — both involving elderly women followed to their homes and attacked.
On July 15, 2012, an 82-year-old woman was returning to her Oak Grove home in northern Calhoun County. She’d been shopping in Alexandria, and she believed she was being followed by someone driving a small, white sedan.
When she pulled into her driveway, the man followed, too, getting out and rushing her and physically subduing her. He raped her and took some credit cards, but he never used them, giving investigators nothing to track.
On July 28, 2013, in adjacent Talladega County, there was another rape. A 67-year-old woman, investigators believe, was followed home from church, and a man came to her door, telling her he was selling books. He raped her and left with some cash. Investigators said he also was driving a white car.
Wade was chief deputy at the time, and he wondered then, based on the similarities — the victim’s ages, the victims followed to their homes, both in rural areas, and the white vehicle — if the two incidents in the two counties were related.
DNA testing proved they were, he said Tuesday.
Talking about those cases in July 2014, Wade wondered if there were other incidents or other attempts.
He raised the same concerns Tuesday. “How often did he follow someone,” the sheriff wondered, and then stop, thinking, ‘No, this neighborhood isn’t right.’
That prospect, and this suspect’s job sitting with elderly patients, has left the sheriff concerned that there may be other victims.
Wade urged anyone who knows where White is to contact police at 911, and he urged people to be aware of their surroundings.
Anyone who sees White should not approach him, he cautioned.
Contact Gadsden Times reporter Donna Thornton at 256-393-3284 or donna.thornton@gadsdentimes.com.
