Suspect in hostage case draws 35 years

The man still faces charges that began in Youngstown.

STAFF AND WIRE REPORT

COLUMBUS — A career criminal accused of escaping from federal custody and holding a Hilliard woman hostage was sentenced Thursday to 35 years in prison for previous convictions.

The Columbus Dispatch reported that U.S. District Judge Gregory L. Frost ordered the sentence for Billy Jack Fitzmorris, 35, for charges of gun and cocaine possession in 2005. The sentence came after multiple outbursts of obscenities from Fitzmorris to the judge.

The long sentence was warranted because of Fitzmorris’ lengthy criminal history, Frost said.

Fitzmorris was on parole from burglary convictions when his Obetz-area home was raided by federal and local agents as part of a cocaine-trafficking investigation, the newspaper reported.

He pleaded guilty to the gun and drug charges in January 2007 but tried to withdraw his plea later.

In April 2007, it took Fitzmorris, a federal prisoner at the time, just 70 seconds to sprint out of St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown and begin his trek to a Columbus suburb. He had been at St. Elizabeth’s for treatment of a gash on his head. His intravenous pole was found in a stairwell.

Fitzmorris, possibly using a 9-inch shank (homemade knife), overpowered a Northeast Ohio Correctional Center guard on the eighth floor of the hospital. He briefly held two nurses and four NOCC guards hostage before escaping with a guard’s uniform and .38-caliber revolver. The nurses and guards were reportedly shaken but unharmed.

He is accused of carjacking a motorist near the hospital to drive him to central Ohio, robbing two banks, and holding a woman hostage before surrendering to police. His trial on those charges is set for mid-September in Frost’s courtroom in Columbus.