South Carolina fugitive caught in Texas motel with guns and cash

46-year-old Jimmy Causey is headed back to prison.  He was taken to the Williamson County Jail after being caught in a Cedar Park Motel in the wee hours of Friday morning.
               
Causey has been serving a life sentence in South Carolina for holding a lawyer at gunpoint.  In 2005, he and a fellow inmate escaped from another South Carolina prison by hiding in a garbage truck.
               
This week, on the evening of the Fourth of July, he escaped again.  This time from the Lieber Correctional Institution near Charleston.

"He used a makeshift dummy to fake the staff out that he was still in his bed...and we issued Be On Alerts to the media," said Bryan Stirling, Director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections. 

In a Friday morning press briefing, Stirling says a cell phone was used to help Causey escape.  And possibly a drone.

"We 100% know a cell phone was used or multiple cell phones were used while he was incarcerated and we believe a drone was used to fly in the tools that allowed him to escape," Stirling said.

Stirling says Causey used wire cutters to tear through 4 fences. 

READ: Escaped inmate may have used wire cutters delivered by drone

4 days later he reared his head 1,200 miles away in Central Texas.

"They handed that information over to the Texas Rangers with the Texas Department of Public Safety which then conducted a further investigation and determined this individual was in the Motel 6 in Cedar Park," said Deputy U.S. Marshal Brandon Filla with the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force.

Filla says law enforcement entered Causey's room and took him quietly into custody around 3 Friday morning. 

"They see Causey laying there in bed, he's asleep," Filla said.

Filla says Causey had a loaded pistol on his nightstand and a shotgun at his feet.

"Both weapons are loaded to full capacity with rounds in the barrel ready to fire.  As well as binoculars there near the window where he was on the 3rd floor where he had a clear view of his vehicle," Filla said.

Causey also had four cell phones, a fake ID and more than $47,000 in cash.

"He had a red Ford Explorer which had plates belonging to another vehicle.  Those plates were out of Georgia.  So he had a plan," Filla said.

Clyde Houston, longtime operations manager for the Cedar Park Motel 6 says it was a quiet operation.

"None of the guests knew anything about it, nobody in the area knew anything about it.  Law enforcement handled it really well...and at no time was anybody ever in danger," Houston said.  "I'm not going to be afraid to continue working here and I don't want any of our guests to be afraid to keep coming back."

Filla says nightfall was an advantage to the task force.  If they had caught Causey in the daylight, he may have put up a fight.

"We always say in the fugitive game, they have to be lucky every day and we have to be lucky just one time," Filla said.