A burglar alarm just after midnight brought a fresh focus in the search from escaped murderer Danelo Cavalcante that ultimately led to the 34-year-old fugitive’s capture eight hours later, despite a thunderstorm that grounded air support overnight.
Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens told reporters that teams had been searching an area not far from the burglar alarm and responded to the call but didn’t find him. Crews moved in the direction of the alarm though, and less than an hour later, a fixed-wing plane operating thermal cameras spotted at “heat signal they began to track.”
“Tactical teams began to converge on that location, where the heat source was moving,” he said. “Unfortunately, we had a weather system that came in.”
The thunderstorm with frequent lightning strikes forced the aircraft out of the air, but “tactical teams secured the area as best they could for the duration of the storm,” Bivens said.
Shortly after 8 a.m., he said, tactical teams from the US Customs and Border Patrol and Pennsylvania State Police quietly moved into the area where the heat source had been seen.
“He did not realize he was surrounded,” Bivens said. “He began to crawl through thick underbrush, taking his rifle with him was he went.”
Cavalcante didn’t have an opportunity to use the gun, however. The tactical teams released a K9 officer, who subdued him until the officers arrived to take him into custody. He sustained “a minor bite wound,” Bivens said, adding that medical teams treated the “minor injury.”
He had nothing with him but the rifle he stole Monday night and the clothing he was wearing.
Cavalcante was taken to a state police headquarters for processing and an interview and will be taken to a state facility afterward to begin serving his life sentence. Bivens declined to say what facility that would be.
Cavalcante had been on the run for two weeks, since his August 31 escape from Chester County Prison, where he had been awaiting tranfer to a state prison after his conviction for the 2021 murder of his ex-girlfriend, as CrimeOnline has reported.
The search was initially center in an area not far from the county jail, in and near Longwood Gardens, a popular botanical garden, until Saturday, when he slipped through the police perimeter, stole a dairy farm’s delivery van, and drove 20 miles to the Phoenixville area in northern Chester County.
There, he tried unsuccessfully tried to contact former coworkers and abandoned the van, out of gas, in a field behind a barn. The search recentered in the northern part of the county.
On Monday night, a motorist spotted Cavalcante by the road. Responding police didn’t locate him at that time but found footprints in the ud, leading to his prison shoes. Shortly afterward, a resident reported a pair of boots stolen from her porch.
Two hours after that sighting, Cavalcante entered a resident’s garage where he encountered the homeowner. He grabbed a rifle leaning in the corner and fled as the homeowner fired at him with a pistol. The fugitive was not struck.
Bivens said that Cavalcante was completely on his own Wednesday morning, with no assistance. He said that there had been “people who intended to assist him” throughout the search, but “we have been successful in preventing that assistance from reach him.” Charges against any of those people would only come after a discussion with the Chester County district attorney, he said.
Bivens, who led the search for Cavalcante, was joined at the news conference by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania State Police chief Col. Christopher Parris, Chester County District Attorney Deb Ryan, and other officials.
Shapiro made the official announcement of the capture, saying the fugitive “was apprehended this morning with no shots fired.”
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[Featured image: Danelo Cavalcante/Pennsylvania State Police]
