Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 21, 1993 TAG: 9309210063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Michael Hampton Sonner, 25, who was being sought on charges he raped and robbed a Montgomery County woman after his escape from a minimum-security prison, was captured Saturday in Butte, Mont., when he stepped off a Greyhound bus.
Lt. O.P. Ramsey said Sonner apparently switched buses during his travel. He had purchased a bus ticket in West Virginia bound for Moses Lake, Wash. But when Chicago police checked the bus during a layover there, Sonner was not aboard.
Investigator Barbara Bibb talked with the driver of the original bus. The driver remembered seeing Sonner and was able to provide a schedule for the bus Sonner was believed to have transferred to, Ramsey said.
Sonner, who had been incarcerated since 1991 on breaking and entering charges, gave Montana police an alias when they surrounded him at the Greyhound stop in Butte, police say, but was arrested without incident.
An extradition hearing is scheduled for today at 9:30 a.m. MDT (11:30 a.m EDT). North Carolina authorities were planning to return Sonner to their state on an escape charge before he faces the Montgomery County charges of rape, robbery, abduction and grand larceny.
The bus Sonner was traveling on was headed for Seattle. His ticket indicated he had boarded the bus in Chicago, the same place police there stopped another man who matched Sonner's description.
Police had been looking for Sonner since he escaped last Tuesday from the Davie County Landfill Recycling Center, about an hour southwest of Greensboro. Police began searching for him in West Virginia after the truck of a woman he is suspected of raping turned up in Bluefield. Sonner is suspected of stealing the woman's truck, raping her and forcing her to drive to a Blacksburg bank to withdraw $1,000 and give it to him.
by CNB