JONESBORO, Ga. — A convicted killer who was mistakenly released from a Georgia jail has been caught two weeks later in Florida, the U.S. Marshals Service said Friday.
Kathan Guzman was apprehended Friday by the U.S. Marshals Service in Florida, spokesman Brady McCarron told The Associated Press. Guzman admitted to strangling his girlfriend, 19-year-old Delila Grayson, who was found dead in a bathtub in August 2022, Clayton County Sheriff Levon Allen has told WSB-TV.
Authorities had suspected Guzman, who’s in his early 20s, may have gone back Osceola County, south of Orlando.
That’s where the victim’s mother, Christina Grayson, lives. She was terrified Guzman would come after the family for their role in the trial, WFTV-TV reports. Her family was sleeping in shifts so that someone was awake at all times, she told the Orlando broadcaster.
“I feel like I’m a sitting duck,” she said. Osceola County deputies had been patrolling her neighborhood as the search continued.
The U.S. Marshalls spokesman said he did not have more specific details such as the location of the arrest in Florida and that further information would come from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia.
Jail employees in Clayton County mistakenly released Guzman late last month because they didn’t read paperwork carefully, failing to see that he’d been convicted of murder and assault by strangulation and was sentenced to life in prison, the county sheriff said.
However, it wasn’t until Tuesday that the Georgia Office of Victim Services couldn’t locate Guzman in the corrections system and notified the prosecutor’s office, Clayton County District Attorney Tasha Mosley said in a statement. Mosley said her employees then checked the jail’s computer system, which appeared to show Guzman had been released, so they immediately notified the sheriff.
Because of the delay in figuring out what had happened, Grayson said she wasn’t told her daughter’s murderer was on the loose until Tuesday, after the district attorney learned of it, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“Our deputies are aware of the situation and are in contact with Georgia authorities,” the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “Our primary goal remains the safety of our community.”
Guzman told someone after his mistaken release that “God is good” and that he believes it was the result of a higher power, the Clayton County sheriff told WSB.
Mosley, the district attorney, is extremely frustrated.
“All appropriate paperwork was sent to the appropriate people. I have no idea why they released this man,” Mosley told the Atlanta newspaper. “We are just as disappointed and pissed off as everybody else.”
As of Friday morning, the Clayton County sheriff’s office had not issued any public notifications about the mistaken release or Guzman’s possible whereabouts. A sheriff’s spokesman told The Associated Press that the agency was preparing a statement that would be sent to residents through the “Nixle” alert system, which would also include a photo of Guzman.
