Convicts Force Youth to Be Getaway Driver
A teen-ager was held hostage by two prison escapees during an 11-day, 4,000-mile crime spree because he could drive with a stick shift and they could not, a sheriff’s spokesman said.
Ted Siegel, a 16-year-old honor student, was kidnaped Jan. 3 in Ocala by two escapees from the Marion County Correctional Institution and released unharmed last weekend near Baltimore, officers said.
Authorities were searching for escapees Patrick Hughes Paige, 21, and Anthony James Cokley, 22, in the abduction.
Siegel’s kidnapers could not drive his manual transmission car, Marion County sheriff’s spokesman Ken Ergle said Tuesday. So they kept Siegel as their getaway driver as they staged robberies in eight East Coast states, he said.
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