SPOKANE, Wash. – The Washington sheriff's office that captured a man who had escaped from a psychiatric hospital gives much of the credit to a canine officer named Gunnar.
The dog found Garver, who was hiding under debris in the woods, signaling the officers.
"I was afraid this was going to go sideways. I'm glad it didn't," said spokesman Mark Gregory of the Spokane sheriff's office.
Gregory said Saturday morning that the two human officers did their job Friday night, but Gunnar was the key to capturing Anthony Garver without injury to any of the humans.
Garver is being held in the Spokane jail under a U.S. marshal warrant. He was treated for dehydration after his capture, the sheriff's office said.
Kathy Spears of the Washington Department of Social and Health Services expects to have an update Saturday afternoon about what will happen next to Garver, who was hiding in the woods near his family home around 8:15 p.m. Friday.
Jeremy Barclay, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Corrections, said his agency will continue to work with the Department of Social and Health Services on the case, even though Garver was under a civil commitment and had finished serving his incarceration period.
"We're not sure of the next steps yet," Barclay said.
Garver, 28, who is accused of torturing a woman to death, escaped from the psychiatric hospital Wednesday night. He crawled out a window of a locked, lower-security unit with another patient, Mark Alexander Adams, 58, who was caught the next day.
Garver was charged in 2013 with tying a 20-year-old woman to her bed with electrical cords, stabbing her 24 times in the chest and slashing her throat, prosecutors said.
Garver, who bought a bus ticket from Seattle to Spokane after he escaped, had last been seen on Thursday in the Spokane area where his parents live after his father called authorities to report his son had stopped by briefly.
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