A Columbus man suspected of going on a 100-mile rampage across Alabama that left four people dead is in custody after a harrowing 36-hour crime spree that included several violent robberies and a shootout with police, according to news reports.
Police accuse Derrick Hightower in the attacks that began early last Friday with the shooting death of Nancy Nash, 54, a Phenix City resident whose body was found at an Auburn landscaping business near a burning pickup truck.
Hightower, 32, has been charged with capital murder in her death, along with a second suspect, Kentrice Hill, 21, who is being held in the Lee County jail without bail, according to WSFA 12 News in Montgomery.
Credit: Source: Lee County Sheriff's Office and Muscogee County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Source: Lee County Sheriff's Office and Muscogee County Sheriff's Office
Police have not revealed the nature of their relationship, if there is one.
Hightower is the primary suspect in three other slayings across the state in the same crime spree, although charges had not been filed in those cases as of early Wednesday.
The dead include a Dadeville couple — Willie Tidwell, 61, and his 65-year-old wife, Barbara — who were shot to death in their home late Friday, according to Dadeville Police Chief Johnathan Floyd.
Early Saturday, police received a tip that Nash’s 2019 Nissan Frontier was found parked at a hotel in Irondale, outside Birmingham.
There, a man leaving the parking lot in a silver sedan shot at police, who returned fire after attempting to stop the driver, reports said.
Wounded in the arm, the suspect, alleged to be Hightower, jumped from the moving car and fled on foot, police said.
No officers were injured in the shooting, reports said.
The abandoned car, which rolled into a ditch, led authorities to a fourth victim, Antione Harris, 36, of Birmingham, who was shot to death in his home before dawn Saturday, investigators said.
A manhunt by SWAT, helicopter and tracking dogs lasted for hours Saturday until Hightower finally surrendered, dressed only in boxer shorts and socks, according to a report by AL.com. He was taken to a hospital for treatment, then transferred to the Birmingham jail pending transfer to Auburn to face charges of murder and property theft, AP reports.
Police also connected Hightower to a Friday morning robbery of three people at an urgent care center in Chelsea, about 90 miles north of the first crime scene, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said in a release.
At least seven police departments from multiple jurisdictions were continuing to investigate.
In March 2009, gunman Michael McLendon went on a rampage and killed 10 people, many of the victims were family members, in three Alabama counties before turning the gun on himself.
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