The last time Anthony James Freeland wore a pair of handcuffs he was on his way to Anne Arundel District Court on various charges, including robbery with a deadly weapon, theft and assault.
That was Sept. 3, the day Freeland, 20, and another man bolted from a private security vehicle as it arrived at the District Court to deliver prisoners. Later, officials speculated that Freeland had hidden a handcuff key in his mouth and used it to escape.
Today, Freeland, of Severn, was back in the Anne Arundel County Detention Center, after county police captured him driving a stolen car Sunday night in the Marley area of the county.
County police said Freeland was a busy man during the two months he eluded capture.
Freeland confessed to robbing 14 fast-food restaurants, liquor stores, hotels and other businesses in Anne Arundel and Howard counties and stealing four cars between Sept. 30 and Nov. 10, police said.
Sgt. James Moore, a county police spokesman, said Freeland admitted committing those robberies, but yesterday was charged with only one of them -- the Oct. 30 robbery of the Subway restaurant in the 7900 block of Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard in Glen Burnie.
L "We will seek indictments on the other charges," Moore said.
Officers also recovered a .38-caliber handgun they believe was used in some of the holdups.
Police said they had received an anonymous tip that Freeland, who had faced trial on several counts of armed robbery before his escape, would be in the Marley area.
After setting up surveillance teams, police spotted Freeland driving a gray Chevrolet Spectrum along Holloway Road, near Marley Junior High School. Police stopped the vehicle in a nearby driveway about 9 p.m. and arrested Freeland without incident.
The car Freeland was driving had been stolen from a Glen Burnie parking lot Nov. 8, police said.
A court commissioner ordered Freeland held without bail on the escape charge, pending a bail review hearing today before a District Court judge.
Freeland, who officials said previously had escaped from Pennsylvania authorities, apparently got a handcuff key and hid it in his mouth so that it would not be found during a search before he went to court Sept. 3.
On the ride to the court building on Taylor Avenue, officials said, Freeland apparently was able to unlock both his cuffs and the cuffs of Donald Leander Curtis, 21, of Glen Burnie.
Both men ran toward busy downtown Annapolis as soon as the doors of the private security vehicle were opened. Efforts to track them down using police dogs proved unsuccessful.
Curtis, who at the time of his escape was charged with robbery, burglary and possession of narcotics, was captured Sept. 24 by county police. He was ordered held without bail.