Michael Lynn Sherer wasn’t about to let a little thing like incarceration pending his murder trial stop him from his one true love—NASCAR. So he did the only reasonable thing he could think of.
He escaped.
After busting out of the Winston County Jail in Alabama, the 51-year-old Sherer trekked to Hampton, Georgia, home of the Atlanta Motor Speedway. Without sufficient funds to purchase tickets to Sunday’s Emory Healthcare 500 Race, Sherer tried bartering with vendors using his best available resource.
His .22 caliber pistol.
Amazingly enough, one vendor obliged, trading the convict a pair of tickets to the race for his pistol. It was about this time that vendors made Hampton police officer Eric Hayes aware that a guy was trying to swap his gun for some ducats.
Hayes approached Sherer as he made his way back to The Waffle House, and was certain something wasn’t right with the man when Sherer, who initially used his h0micide victim’s name as an alias, couldn’t remember his date of birth. Of course, anyone would have trouble remembering their birthday, what with The Waffle House beckoning in the distance. But I digress.
“[Sherer] kept stumbling with a date of birth, so just from our experience and training, we knew something was going on,” said Hayes. “It was pretty obvious.”
Sherer finally broke down and told the police his real name, and was subsequently arrested on the outstanding murder and jailbreak charges. He was extradited back to Alabama this past Thursday.
