LEITCHFIELD, KY. — Police say two teenage sweethearts have blazed a trail of crime across the South, leaving in their path a string of stolen vehicles and pilfered checks and stirring concern about their increasingly bold behavior.
The 18-year-old and his 13-year-old girlfriend — who had apparently convinced the boy and his family that she was 19 — have eluded capture and are thought to be cruising around in a stolen truck with two guns.
“There’s going to come a time when we’re not going to see him as an 18-year-old kid,” said Norman Chaffins, the sheriff in Grayson County, Ky., where the pair disappeared about two weeks ago. “We’re going to see him as someone who’s stolen three vehicles with two handguns in them, and the outcome is not going to be good for either one of them if they don’t turn themselves in.”
Dalton Hayes and Cheyenne Phillips vanished Jan. 3 from their small hometown in western Kentucky, the sheriff said. Since then, authorities think the two have traveled to South Carolina and Georgia.
Hayes’ mother urged the couple to surrender and “face the consequences.”
“I pretty much cry myself to sleep every night worrying about where they are and if a police officer or any random individual tries to pull them over and isn’t so nice and hurts them,” Tammy Martin said.
The couple had been dating for about three months. The girl portrayed herself as being 19, and the family, including Martin’s son, believed her, she said.
Cheyenne “would go in and write checks, and she would come out with cigarettes and stuff, so I didn’t have any reason not to believe she wasn’t 19,” Martin said.
By the time her son realized she was a mere 13, “he was already done in love with her,” Martin said.
When he hit the road, Hayes was running from trouble back home. He faces burglary and theft charges in his home county, stemming from an arrest late last year, according to Grayson County court records.
He was planning to be at the local judicial center Jan. 5 to find out whether a grand jury had indicted him on the charges, his mother said. His case did not come up, but by that time the teens were gone.
Chaffins said he thinks Hayes is calling the shots as the teens try to stay ahead of police. He said the situation is getting more serious as time passes, he said.
“This is not a game to us,” Chaffins said. “Our biggest fear is that Dalton is not going to stop for the police. He’s going to run every time they approach him.”
