Article: Floyd County Prison scapee still on the loose

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Escapee is still on the loose

The state prisoner is believed to have hid in the ceiling of The Forum.
12/29/04

By Matt Tuck, Rome News-Tribune Staff Writer
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Stephen D. Addis, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, 160 pounds, brown hair, eyes. He was last seen wearing white pants with a blue stripe and a white shirt with STATE PRISONER on it, officials said.

Authorities were looking Tuesday for a Floyd County Prison inmate who escaped from a work detail at The Forum.

Stephen D. Addis, 41, originally of Habersham County, escaped Monday when he hid inside the ceiling at The Forum, stole the keys to a county car and drove away sometime Monday, said Ann Brinkley, Floyd County Prison warden.

“He was on work detail, and when it came time to leave, they couldn’t find him,” the warden said.

Brinkley said Addis and three other inmates were doing maintenance work at The Forum under the supervision of one Forum officer around 2:30 p.m. Sometime after dark, Addis got out of sight and hid, making his break later.

Brent Poplin, manager of The Forum, said his officers — who are county employees — combed the building and used a bloodhound to search outside. “They went through the entire building,” he said. “But he was right under our noses the whole time.”

After concluding that Addis had left the premises, Poplin said, doors to the building and offices were left unlocked for a worker to clean the carpets at 5 p.m.

Sometime after that, he said, Addis slipped into an office, took the car keys off a bulletin board and left. There was no money missing, he added. “I didn’t think about somebody getting to the keys. It really burns me up thinking about ... how easy it was for him.”

Brinkley said Addis could be going back to Habersham County. “Most of the time, they end up going home,” she said.

Normally, Poplin said, two officers supervise the work detail, but one was on vacation Monday. The cleaning man, he said, did not know an escaped convict was on the loose.

Poplin said he didn’t know the car was missing until he went back to The Forum at 11 p.m. Monday.

Addis had been at the Floyd County Prison since Sept. 9 and was considered minimum security.

“He’s never been a problem at our facility,” Brinkley said. He was serving a five-year sentence for theft by receiving stolen property and burglary in Rabun County and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in Habersham County.

His maximum possible release date was March 28, 2009, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections Web site.

Although Poplin said this is the first work-detail escape at The Forum in his nine years there, there will be changes to their security procedures. “We’ll have to go back and re-evaluate everything,” he said.

Brinkley said until things are changed, she will not be sending inmates to work at The Forum.

Poplin said no disciplinary action is contemplated until the county completes its investigation into the matter. “I’ve talked to the officer, and he feels as bad as I do about it,” he said.