A Kansas fugitive who led officers from five counties and the Highway Patrol on a chase through Buffalo and Jerauld counties, armed and in a stolen pickup, escaped from the Beadle County Correctional Center early Tuesday morning.

CHARLES L. BEENEY, JR. — (AP Photo/Beadle County Sheriff’s Office).

Charles Leroy Beeney, Jr., 45, of Lansing, Kan. held a correctional officer hostage at 12:30 a.m. with a makeshift gun carrying .45 caliber shells. The officer was forced to release Beeney and give him his personal items and clothing.
Beeney is a white male, 5’ 11” tall and weighs 160 pounds. He has shoulder length brown hair, a goatee, blue eyes and tattoos on his arms. He was last seen wearing blue jeans and a black Carhart coat. State radio reported Tuesday morning that Beeney could be in a white 1990 F-250 pickup with license plate of 4CD178.

If anyone sees Beeney, they are urged not to approach him, but to call authorities immediately. He is considered armed and dangerous.

Beeney led police on a high-speed pursuit the morning of Dec. 3 after he was caught siphoning diesel fuel from a farmyard south of Gann Valley. The chase ended with Beeney crashing into a creek eight miles west of Alpena.
As it turned out the man had felony warrants out for his arrest in Kansas, the pickup was stolen from a North Dakota dealership and there was a rifle in the vehicle with him.
He was being held in the Huron Jail for charges of aggravated eluding out of Jerauld County and other charges from the state of Kansas.
Area schools were locked down Tuesday, but classes went on as usual.
The Jamestown Sun reported that in 2010, Beeney attempted to escape from North Dakota’s state prison 43 days before his release. He was serving time for stealing a pickup and escaping from a county jail in 2005. He had been serving a sentence involving a chase with North Dakota law enforcement at the time of his escape.
An internet search brings up a number of charges including one in Kansas for attempting to elude a police officer, which was reversed in appellate court in 2005.

Beeney was captured in Sioux Falls Tuesday evening.