Holed up inside. Fugitive Gary Hughes somehow eluded police who had surrounded his sister’s rural house. When did he escape? How? To where? Image: Steve Lunde
Two square miles blocked off near Taylor
TAYLOR. Wis. – Police established a perimeter around two square miles of dense pine forest where they believed a felon had taken refuge after firing shots at a deputy late Thursday. A plane equipped with heat sensors flew sorties overhead for images of a human-size subject in the dense woods. The woods also are home to dozens of deer. Sought was Gary G. Hughes, 78. He had fled a nearby house Thursday night during a 15-hour police stand-off. It was unclear how he escaped while dozens of police, including a SWAT team, surrounded the house on a mostly open low hilltop. A small stream, Pine Creek, runs through the property from the woods where Hughes was thought it be hiding. At the far end of the woods is Lincoln Road, beyond which is a huge forest that stretches 10 miles over hilly terrain to Black River Falls. Had Hughes made it across Lincoln Road?
Sisters get out safely
Not long ago Hughes was released from prison and staying at the home of a recently widowed sister, Sue Ann Norby, on Kelly Road just east of Taylor. A second sister was visiting. Hughes fired a gun at a deputy delivering an arrest warrant for a probation violation. Hughes said he wouldn’t be taken alive. The sisters got out of the house safely.