On Tuesday afternoon, May 14 at 3:20 pm, Alaska State Troopers responded to the Alcan border and arrested Jason Echeverri, the felon who escaped from customs officials in early October and fled, leading Canadian authorities on a miles long chase down the Canadian highway.
Echeverri escaped from U.S. Customs officials while awaiting transport to the Fairbanks jail for violating his conditions of probation after using the restroom facilities. He overpowered his guards in the hallway and led officials on a chase up and over a nearby hill.
By the time customs had gained the top of the hill. Echeverri had ran down the other side and back to the Customs facility. When he gained reentry into the building, he retrieved his keys to the sedan he was driving and escaped to the other side of the border.
The escapee took Mounties on a chase through the Yukon Territory that didn’t end until near Kluane Lake. There, Echeverri, abandoned his vehicle that he had driven for over eighteen miles on flat tires after running over spike strip set out to stop him. He fled on foot for five miles to an Arctic Institute cabin in the area, as Mounties evacuated homes in the vicinity.
Echeverri pled guilty in a Whitehorse terrritorial courtroom in February of this year. He pled out to three charges for his four-hour, 250-mile run from Canadian law. Two of those charges were reckless driving and one count was entering Canada ilegally. Another charrge of breaking and entering that he was subsequently charged with after breaking into the cabin, were dropped when he told the judge he only went into the cabin to warm up and wait for Canadian authorities.
Echeverri has been in a Whitehorse jail since the incident, and was released on Tuesday.
He was picked up by Alaska State Troopers at the border and transported to Fairbanks and remanded there on separate $50,000 bail and no-bail warrants. He also is to face charges of Assault on the U.S. Customs Officials.
He was arraiigned in Fairbanks District Court on Wednesday on charges of Felony Escape, Assault, and Violating Conditions of his Parole.