It started at a nondescript Circle K convenience store, on a bluff overlooking the imposing fake steamboat of the AmeriStar casino in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
There, near the I-20 Mississippi River bridge and a turnout where Civil War cannons point impotently across the mile-wide bend, Joseph Spring stopped for gas on an early spring day in March 2019.
There would be disagreement over certain details, such as whether police encountered Spring at the Circle K during a traffic stop and discovered warrants for his arrest, or approached him after stopping another vehicle and found that he was wanted for questioning, but everyone agrees that during the confrontation he broke and ran.
From the Circle K, Spring ran down the bluff, across the sprawling casino parking lot and onto its riverside loading dock. Faced with no place left to run, he now had two choices: surrender to the pursuing officers or dive into the cold, flooded river.
Spring jumped. Though the murky, swirling currents were swollen with northern snowmelt, they were far shallower in the vicinity of the dock than they appeared, so when he plunged into the water he quickly hit bottom, which was lined with jagged rocks known as riprap, and mangled both feet and gashed his head.
Still, he managed to swim away.
“I swam so deep my ears popped,” Swing said over the phone from the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, where he is imprisoned following a later escape from the Hinds County jail, on May 29, 2023. “And I swallowed a lot of water. I was actually spitting it out underwater.”
I had been researching Spring for months, starting during the three weeks that he was on the run from the jail, initially to assess the danger he posed in the area near my home. After finding that he had apparently escaped twice before, I went deeper and happened upon his three Facebook pages, which chronicled the engaging backstory of a stranger on the run. He appeared to be a serial escape artist, and I was particularly interested in his audacious, seminal Vicksburg escapade. Now, finally, I had a chance to ask him about it.
Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones had likewise noted the episode, saying while Spring was on the run from the county jail, “We’re talking about a guy that was as desperate some years ago, he jumped into the Mississippi River. So, as you can see, he’s desperate to stay on the run.”
Spring laughed when I brought it up, perhaps because he is predictably questioned about the episode when the subject of his criminal record comes up.
The river at the point where Spring jumped is notoriously treacherous, owing to powerful currents crisscrossing the wide bend at the confluence with the Yazoo River, against the rocky bluffs and around the pilings of two tall bridges. Continuous whirlpools sometimes pull entire floating trees beneath the surface, then release them violently far downstream. Towboats occasionally career across the turbulent currents and collide with the massive concrete piers of the bridges. Even at less menacing points the Mississippi is not the lazy river that is often imagined. It is deeper than 100 feet in spots and sometimes turns against itself. The bottom is basically its own river of flowing sand.
Knowing the river, I was a bit awed by Spring’s feat of daring. Reading about the episode in news reports from the time, it was hard not to pull for this crazily determined young man, even if he was an outlaw. Who tries to escape a traffic stop by swimming a wide, frigid river?
Spring, who was 27 at the time and swimming fully clothed, still wearing his sneakers, eventually emerged a short distance downriver and pulled himself onto the bank, out of sight of the police and sheriff’s deputies who were engaged in what turned out to be a five-hour manhunt on land and by boat. At one point during the search, the officers assumed he had drowned.
As he made his way inland, hobbled and bloody, Spring was later spotted “running,” according to one report – though limping would probably be more accurate -- through an abandoned railroad tunnel near the I-20 interchange. He was then captured, arrested and transported to a local hospital by ambulance, unaware of how badly injured he was until one of the officers observed that his feet were swelling out of his shoes.
Listening to Spring talk about this was a bit surreal, after having initially feared him as a menacing apparition and studying him online and in government records offices. Following his dramatic recapture from the Hinds County jailbreak, in June, I had phoned his attorney, hoping to make a connection to pose the many questions swirling in my head. The attorney, Ammie Nguyen, put me in touch with his mother, Angela Spring, who had been arrested during his flight from the jail for allegedly hindering the investigation. Nguyen also gave Spring my phone number. The irony was that I had gone from worrying that a fugitive might show up on my property to awaiting his call on my cell.
When the call came, it was via a paid correctional company service. I was not at my laptop at the time and did not have my list of questions in front of me, but I had a pen and pad that I would soon fill with notes.
I had expected Spring to be cocky, as he appears in selfies posted to his Facebook pages, but he was comparatively reserved. He came across as polite, smart, and most of all, observant. I figured he was taking my measure, assessing the situation and considering how he might benefit from engaging with me, perhaps as a way to tell his side of the story. If I were him, I would wonder why this guy was so interested. Partly, it is because the idea of escape, which Spring seemed particularly good at, is inherently interesting. Then there were those intriguing complexities in his backstory.
I was aware that Spring was also adept at manipulating people. Multiple individuals had been arrested for allegedly aiding and abetting him, acting as accomplices or hindering the investigation into his most recent escape. He seemed persuasive. Many times, people that he convinced to help him were captured while he escaped. Identifying too closely with a subject is an occupational hazard of journalism, but I was under no delusions. Spring was a criminal who had burglarized numerous houses and had been charged with multiple crimes involving firearms and drugs. He was volatile and associated with all sorts of dangerous people. He was not someone most people would consider trustworthy. He had put himself and many other people at significant risk. But everyone knows something that I don’t know, and he was interesting. At this point I had only excerpts from his tumultuous life, and they contained contradictions and a few obvious errors, but most of all they prompted questions.
Our conversation was necessarily abbreviated – 10 minutes, at $1 a minute, which someone else was apparently paying for – and free ranging. He had things he wanted to say, I had questions to ask. We bounced around and did not tarry long on any topic. He said we would have other opportunities to talk, which I hope will include a face-to-face meeting at the prison, but for now we were curious, disembodied strangers, gathering key tidbits of information and aware of the ticking clock. The Vicksburg episode was basically a quick cut in a short trailer of his life.
I will further detail our conversation in upcoming episodes, but the river run, which had initially sparked my curiosity about him, was the first story involving Spring that had made the news prior to his jailbreak, and it often came up when locals discussed the fugitive on the run who seemed to be a master at evading the law. In the local mythology he always managed to get away by swimming the river, though that was not the case. In his long criminal and social media history, dating to 2010, Spring seemed always to be plumbing the depths, getting himself in trouble, then finding a temporary way out. He had hit bottom many times, in this case literally.
When I earlier spoke with Spring’s mother, she had said that he ran because he was scared, and that he had been quickly discharged from the hospital and transferred to a police precinct in another county where he was on probation. Someone there had phoned her to say he still needed urgent medical attention. “I went and picked him up at the police station. That’s how much of a warrant they had,” she said, sardonically. He had broken both feet, she added. Then she went off on another worrying, riveting tale, about a different phone call, from Spring, which landed her in jail.
Toward the end of the conversation with Spring, a recorded message informed us that the call was about to end, and soon after, his line went dead. I was left on the phone with the girlfriend, who seemed in no hurry to hang up, and had a sweet, terrifying love story to tell.
Notes
WLBT News: Terry man who jumped into river after traffic stop injured; taken to hospital in custody
WAPT News: Mother of escaped detainee, 2 others arrested; Joseph Spring still on the run
Telephone interviews: Joseph Spring, Angela Spring
Photo credit: Joseph Spring Facebook page, October 2019
Eagerly awaiting the love story!
I’ve kayaked that exact part of the Yazoo River in the dark. Alan said it was stupid and deadly. We didn’t listen. I think I would listen now.