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A Washington state man on the lam for more than five months after he was mistakenly released from the Contra Costa County jail despite a murder warrant was apprehended by federal authorities in St. Louis last week.
Isaiah Jamon Andrews, 20, was set to be extradited back to the Seattle area to face a first-degree murder charge for the October shooting death of 20-year-old Theodore Wheeler in the city’s Northgate neighborhood, police said April 1.
The Seattle Police Department soon identified Andrews as the prime suspect after Wheeler was found with a gunshot wound to the chest in the parking lot of a hotel at around 4:50 p.m. Oct. 15. Homicide detectives later that night publicly confirmed Wheeler had died from his injuries.
Andrews was arrested three days later in Antioch after a vehicle pursuit involving the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office and the Antioch and Pittsburg police departments. He was subsequently booked into the Martinez Detention Facility on the murder warrant out of Seattle and a juvenile warrant out of Sacramento, authorities said at the time.
A resident of Kent, Wash., Andrews was on track to be transported back to his home state to face the murder charge after his arrest in Antioch, Seattle police told their community Oct. 20. But he was inexplicably let out of the county jail Oct. 22.
Contra Costa County sheriff’s officials confirmed on Oct. 27 that Andrews had been mistakenly released from the jail days earlier, and despite a search of the area, he could not be located and was believed to no longer be in the Bay Area.
Andrews continued to elude authorities through the fall and winter, but his luck ran out on April Fools’ Day when the U.S. Marshals Service located him in St. Louis. He was arrested without incident that day and due to be extradited back to Washington, Seattle police said.
The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office has not yet publicly revealed the results of the internal investigation its leadership said they were doing to get to the bottom of the circumstances of Andrews’ release from the jail.
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