Trial starts for escaped inmate
Dustin Earl Cotton pleads guilty to escape charges and is set to face trial for an armed robbery charge.
An inmate who escaped from the courthouse on May 8 pleaded guilty Wednesday to escape charges and now faces trial for a Jan. 17 armed robbery.
Floyd County Superior Court Judge Billy Sparks sentenced Dustin Earl Cotton to 10 years in prison — five for the escape charge and five for an interference with government property charge. The sentences will run consecutively. He is currently serving time at Wilcox State Prison on burglary and theft charges with a maximum possible release date of May 2022, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.
Cotton escaped by slipping his leg cuffs and running from the courthouse. The daylong hunt ended that night when law enforcement officials pulled him out of the Etowah River around 10 p.m. Local and statewide law enforcement officials searched along the Etowah River for most of the day and ended up finding him on the riverbank near the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Glenn Milner Boulevard.
A Rome-Floyd Fire Department crew used a thermal imaging camera to see Cotton through the underbrush.
His trial on an armed robbery charge from a Jan. 17 incident on Mathis Road where Cotton reportedly stole a motorcycle began Wednesday. Prosecutors are expected to begin presenting evidence in the trial this morning. In addition to the armed robbery charge he is on trial for, Cotton also faces additional armed robbery and kidnapping charges for a Jan. 30 robbery of a Marathon gas station at 2918 Martha Berry Highway. In that robbery Cotton reportedly grabbed a woman and demanded she get into a vehicle.
The woman struggled with Cotton before she fell to the ground, at which point police say he fled in her vehicle. He was arrested in Bartow County and then taken to Floyd County Jail. He has not been indicted on the Jan. 30 armed robbery.