When law enforcement started to draw in on Danelo Cavalcante, the convicted murderer who avoided Pennsylvania authorities for nearly two weeks after a daring jailbreak, he devised a plan to carjack someone and attempt to flee to Canada or Puerto Rico.
All of that was unsuccessful since Calvalcante, 34, was apprehended by a tactical team from US Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday morning. He was carrying a firearm he reportedly stole days earlier when the team’s search dog, Yoda, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois, bit him in the leg.
“He said the law enforcement presence in this perimeter was becoming too intense, and that he felt that he needed to get out of the area,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark, recounting Cavalcante’s interview, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Cavalcante’s journey started on August 31 when he jumped from the roof of the Chester County Jail after scaling a wall covered with razor wire. He went three days without eating while evading capture and survived by drinking creek water and stealing watermelons from farms, which he then cracked open with his skull.
He concealed in undergrowth so dense that he came within yards of authorities three times while moving at night and staying stationary for days at a time.
He claimed that in an effort to erase his traces from the hundreds of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers who were out looking for him, he covered his faeces with leaves.
“I don’t know that he was particularly skilled. He was desperate,” Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens, the leader and public face of the intensive search, said at a news conference Wednesday. “You have an individual whose choice is go back to prison and spend the rest of your life in a place you don’t want to be, or continue to try and evade capture. He chose to evade capture.”
After he allegedly broke into homes to steal goods, the escape put the neighbourhood on edge.
When Cavalcante arrived at an Avondale, Pennsylvania jail on Wednesday, he was pictured in handcuffs and a medical gown. He will be sent to prison for the 2021 murder of Deborah Brando, his ex-girlfriend.
Cavalcante was reportedly killed as a result of Brando’s alleged discovery of Cavalcante’s suspected participation in the 2017 death of a man in Brazil.
