Local & State Headlines

Police looking for escaped inmate

• Billings was a former basketball standout at Monroe High School.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — A mistake at a Georgia state prison has given freedom to an Albany man with ties to a local street gang who authorities say had at least four active drug warrants.

Wednesday, Dougherty County sheriff’s deputies missed arresting 25-year-old Travis Billings by just a few minutes after tracking him to a local motel.

DCSO Capt. Keith Kiger said that Billings was wanted on four outstanding felony drug warrants including charges of drug trafficking and drug manufacturing.

Kiger said that state correctional officials were supposed to hold Billings in prison until the local {deg}warrants were served, but instead, released him.

“They inadvertently released him back out onto the streets and now we’re trying to get him,” Kiger said.

A former basketball standout at Monroe, Billings played in college briefly with Jacksonville State (Ala.) before returning to Albany and enrolling at Albany State. According to state correctional records, Kiger was sentenced to serve five years in prison for punching Cpl. Willie Briskey in the face Sept. 9, 2005.

He was incarcerated in January 2008 and was released from the Burruss Inmate Boot Camp May 19, records show.

On Aug. 22, 2007, Billings was indicted alongside Bobby Lee Hall for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute within 1000 feet of a housing project, recreation facility and a park.

In a July 10 court order, Superior Court Judge Willie Lockette ordered Billings arrested after he was “mistakenly released by the Georgia Department of Corrections instead of being returned to the Dougherty County Jail.”

Wednesday, deputies searched for Billings at America’s Best Value Inn where he was last seen driving a blue or burgundy late model Cadillac. He was believed to have been in possession of a gun and officers were being advised to use extreme caution in apprehending him.

Billings was shot in the torso at the Mabry Motel by what he told police were rival gang members in April, 2007. Billings professed to being associated with the CME Rattlers street gang.

Anyone with information can call the Dougherty County Sheriff’s Office at 431-2166.

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