By Billy Davis

Kendall Lamont Diggs, wanted by Batesville police for burglary, is 3 for 3 for evading capture.

Or, from their point of view, he’s lucky to be alive.

“I’m thankful he didn’t kill himself,” BPD Detective George Williford said of Diggs, when the fleeing suspect reportedly ran across Interstate 55, in front of an oncoming 18-wheeler, to avoid capture.

That chase occurred last Friday morning in the Dogwood Hills subdivision. Diggs was roofing a home on Hickory Lane when police, aware of his location, closed the trap.

Or at least they thought they did.

“He jumped off the roof and he was gone,” said Williford. “I’ve never seen anybody run like that.”

“We thought we had him. We had a game plan,” said Deputy Chief Don Province.

Diggs, 31, has been on the run since May 14, when employees at the Batesville Civic Center, returning from lunch, discovered a break-in at the main office.

Diggs had been working at the BCC to pay off a fine through the city’s work release program. When the theft was discovered, he fled the BCC on foot before police arrived to question him, said Province.

Police did not disclose the amount of cash taken, but they said the theft amounted to a felony charge. In Mississippi, a theft of at least $500 triggers a felony.

Diggs has not been charged with felony fleeing because he has not endangered others while fleeing. Instead he faces several misdemeanor charges for resisting arrest in addition to the felony charge for the burglary.

A week after Diggs fled from the BCC, he escaped arrest on Woodruff Road when he leapt from a home’s roof, with officers in pursuit, and disappeared into the woods.

On June 12, after Diggs ran across Interstate 55, he was boxed in on Pine Lodge Road for most of the morning. Batesville police, joined by Panola sheriff’s deputies, surrounded a cornfield and an adjoining creek while officers tried to flush him from cover.

In the northwest corner of the cornfield, BPD officer Jamie Tedford tracked Diggs on foot, finding a muddy shoe print and roofing tacks. Soon afterward, BPD Major Jimmy McCloud spotted Diggs in the deep creek, located east of the cornfield.

At 10 a.m., City of Batesville employee John McCollum, driving eastward on Pine Lodge Road, spotted Diggs running north across a pasture.

Authorities then shifted their numbers around the home of Steve Nickle, hoping to box in Diggs from the east and north.

By 10:30, Diggs was likely flushed from the pasture when Tedford, talking to McCollum on a cell phone, walked west down a fencerow.

As Tedford walked the fence, Province and sheriff’s deputy Dean Jones spotted Diggs just a few minutes later near the creek.

By 11:30 the search had escalated: DeSoto County’s sheriff’s department had loaned a pair of K-9 officers and their dogs, and the department’s helicopter.

But the dogs failed to track Diggs, likely thrown off by the scent of his pursuers, and the summer vegetation along the creek was too thick for DeSoto’s pilot and co-pilot to spot their quarry.

By 1 p.m. the helicopter had left for home, and the K-9 officers emerged only with sweat-soaked clothes and a close call with a cottonmouth.

With storm clouds rolling in, authorities called off the search at about 2 p.m.

Police said they were later advised that Diggs, after he fled back west to the creek, had been picked up on a nearby road a short time later.

Batesville police got a second chance late Friday afternoon when officers, between downpours, spotted Diggs at a relative’s home on Shiloh Road.

That search lasted only a short time – 10 minutes or so – before Province called it off.

“He has kin folks up and down that road,” the chief deputy explained afterward. “There was no way we were going to catch him.”

Asked about the extraordinary effort involved last Friday to capture Diggs, Williford and Province said the suspect has refused to surrender himself.

“He was in the city,” Willford said of the June 12 chase. “We did not expect it to become what it did.” 

“He’s making it worse for himself,” added Province.