A Brooklyn man made a frightening discovery when he found a fugitive hiding underneath a sheet in his basement as police looked for him outside.
62-year-old Terry Pierson spotted an “odd lump” in a sheet over his weaving loom while he watched TV on Wednesday night and went to check it out.
“I grabbed my flashlight, moved the sheet and there’s a face looking back at me. He’s been sitting behind my chair for three hours,” Pierson said of the face-to-face encounter. “I went running that way for the police that I know were in the backyard, hollering, ‘He’s in there, he’s in there.’”
The escaped prisoner was identified as Jhonny Soto. He was arrested in Queens for illegal firearm possession on Monday but managed to run away.
“He was already on our porch, so I grabbed the meat cleaver and I chased him off the house,” resident Stefanie Tatsis said. “He jumped over and he started doing his jumping over each yard to try to find his escape.”
Two officers responded to the residents’ reports. Soto was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center.