Phone call from Canton gas station led to escapee’s arrest

Prisoner had stayed in warming center at Canton church.

An escaped prisoner from Connecticut was arrested Wednesday after authorities traced a phone call he made to a Canton gas station.

Jerry Mercado, 25, had been on the run for two weeks before a Chevron clerk notified police of his whereabouts, Canton police spokesman Pacer Cordry said in a news release.

Mercado had been staying at a warming center at the Action Church before authorities were notified he might be in Georgia.

He planned to return later that night.

Mercado was serving a three-year burglary sentence when he escaped from Robinson Correctional Institution in Enfield, Conn., on Jan. 7, according to the Connecticut Department of Corrections.

Connecticut State Police told local authorities Mercado made a call at the Marietta Road gas station Wednesday morning and left, Cordry said. The gas clerk gave police a description of Mercado, who returned to the same station that afternoon.

The clerk called 911 and alerted police, who arrested Mercado without incident.

Authorities have not said what ties Mercado had to Georgia, if any, or how long he’d been in the state.

Once back in Connecticut, Mercado will be taken to the Northern Correctional Institution, where he will be placed on administrative segregation — the agency’s highest level of supervision.