With inmates in area, man loaded his guns, prayed

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Patrick Hale was home alone with his young daughter when he started getting calls from friends that two men accused of killing two prison guards were loose in the vicinity of his rural Tennessee home after a shootout with law enforcement.

Hale recalled Friday that he immediately started loading every weapon in his house before spotting the men climbing over a barbed-wire fence about 300 yards behind his property.

“I prayed like I have never prayed before,” he said.

Then he called 911.

Faced with a decision about whether to hole up in his home’s panic room or get into his car and remove himself and his daughter from the area, he chose the car. He was slowly backing out of the driveway when he noticed the men were already near the house, waving their shirts at him.

“At that point, I realized I had two ex-cons, wanted for murder that had just shot at law enforcement and nothing to lose,” he said. “And for some reason they started to surrender and laid down on their stomachs in my concrete driveway.”

The manhunt for Donnie Rowe and Ricky Dubose suddenly focused on Tennessee Thursday evening after authorities said the fugitives invaded a home in Shelbyville and held a man and his wife hostage for several hours before stealing their car.

The couple alerted law enforcement after the men left, which led to a high-speed chase on Interstate 24 with the men firing at sheriff ’s deputies until they crashed near Hale’s isolated home.

Hale, a 35-year-old drug company employee, said he never drew the guns he had in the car. He said he assumes the inmates mistook his car for a police cruiser.

Law enforcement arrived in force within about three minutes of his

911 call.

“I cannot tell you how grateful we were that they had arrived,” he said.