A store manager in southeastern Pennsylvania described seeing the moment authorities nabbed escaped prisoner Danelo Cavalcante and took him into custody after a two-week manhunt.
Jim Martin, the store manager of Little’s John Deere, recalled seeing the moment Cavalcante was “just surrounded” by a swarm of troops.
“We basically just saw them storming, checking the tree lines, checking the stream and out of nowhere everybody started to congregate back by the shed and here they were already bringing him out and then we watched them basically walk him up,” Martin recalled to NBC Philadelphia.
“One camouflage trooper had his gun, his rifle. They were walking him up. EMS has worked on him in the parking lot and they loaded him up,” he added.
Martin said he couldn’t see any visible injures on Cavalcante.
“He was just surrounded by troops,” Martin said, noting Cavalcante was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles hoodie at the time of the arrest.
Cavalcante’s capture brings an end to an intense manhunt in Chester County, that saw some schools close, over 500 officers conduct search and patrols, and patrol cars blare audio of the convicted murderer’s mother appealing to him in Portuguese to surrender.
Cavalcante — who was convicted Aug. 16 of first-degree murder for fatally stabbing a 33-year-old former girlfriend and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — scaled up a pair of parallel walls onto the roof of Chester County Prison in Pocopson Township to escape on Aug. 31. The daring escape was captured on surveillance footage.
He is also wanted in his native Brazil in connection with a 2017 slaying there.
After days of searching, authorities honed in on him after an aircraft started tracking a heat signature at around 1 a.m. Wednesday, and shortly after 8 a.m. a Border Patrol tactical unit dog, followed by tactical teams, closed in on Cavalcante.
He was transported in an armored vehicle and arrived at the Avondale State Police barracks shortly before 9 a.m., Pennsylvania State Police’s Lt. Col. George Bivens said at a Wednesday morning press conference.
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