The Orlando Sentinel has the amazing tale:
A South Carolina man who faked his death in Florida to elude arrest on drug charges spent almost 20 years hiding for nothing.
After being arrested over the weekend for a minor traffic violation in North Carolina, 49-year-old Bennie Wint learned the drug charges he worked so hard to avoid apparently never existed.
The offense that caught him — a burned-out tag light that costs $1.50 or less at most auto-parts stores — ended almost 20 years of deceit by Wint, who pretended to drown in the surf off Daytona Beach in 1989.
Since then he hid his future from his old family and his past from a new one.
“He told me he had been running for 20 years,” said police Sgt. Stacy Wyatt, who stopped Wint Saturday evening as the driver pulled into a convenience store in Weaverville, N.C., about 10 miles north of Asheville.
At worst, the driver faced a traffic ticket. But he didn’t have a driver’s license and a computer check failed to turn up anything about the name he gave: William James Sweet.
Wyatt said he had no choice under North Carolina law but to jail the man until his identity could be confirmed.
In no time at all, Wint was coming clean to Wyatt.
He said he thought he was probably wanted in South Carolina. Wyatt said he was able to confirm that Wint had a criminal record in that state, but he could find no record of the drug charges that man was hiding from.
1 Comment
Meanwhile, the Citizen-Times, as usual, focuses on the human interest angle, which is far less interesting.