Photo: Pennsylvania State Police
Authorities are revealing new details about Danelo Cavalcante, the escaped murderer who spent nearly two weeks on the run in Pennsylvania before he was captured on Wednesday (September 13).
Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Clark told ABC News that Cavalcante was planning to flee to Canada before he was nabbed.
"He stated he intended to carjack somebody in the next 24 hours and that he was going to head north to Canada," Clark said.
If he made it to Canada, officials believe Cavalcante would have then tried to return home to his native country of Brazil, where he is facing charges for a 2017 murder.
Cavalcante was sentenced to life behind bars in the U.S. for killing his girlfriend in 2021. Just a few days after receiving his sentence, he managed to escape from a prison in Chester County.
He managed to evade the police for nearly two weeks before he was surrounded in a heavily wooded area and taken into custody. He was armed with a .22-caliber rifle and was hiding near a pile of logs. As police moved in, he told investigators that officers nearly stepped on him as he tried to crawl through the thick underbrush to escape.
"He said on multiple occasions law enforcement officers almost stepped on him, [that] we were only five or six feet away," Clark said.
Eventually, a police dog named Yoda was sent after him and managed to subdue him so officers could safely take him into custody.