The former lawyer for escaped Alabama convict Casey Cole White fears his old client might attempt suicide by cop — saying the should-be-inmate suffers from severe mental illness and addiction issues.
Dale Bryant, who represented White in his crime spree in 2015, said his ex-client “wanted to die” after being arrested.
“He was trying to get the officers to shoot him and that is kind of my fear, how this situation is going to end,” he told local news station WAFF.
Now, Bryant fears “Casey may try to shoot [cops] to try and get them to shoot him.”
“I want to say in his interview after his arrest and in my conversations with him, he wanted to die that day,” the lawyer added.
The convicted killer, who fled the Lauderdale County jail April 29 with former assistant director of corrections Vicky White, 56, “suffers from a mental illness,” his former attorney said.
“When he’s on medication and in a supervised environment… he’s a decent person,” Bryant told the station. “When he gets out of incarceration, he is unable to stay on his medication and he even self medicates by smoking methamphetamine or taking other illegal substances.”
The lawyer said Casey White once admitted to him that he can’t function outside a prison environment.
He couldn’t recall the murder suspect’s exact mental illness diagnosis but thinks it might be schizophrenia.
White once developed a close relationship with jail workers in a different Alabama county — long before he allegedly escaped prison and went on the run the former jail guard.
Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton has called their relationship a “jailhouse romance,” and the two are believed to be on the run together.
Vicky White had told co-workers she was bringing Casey to a mental health evaluation at the courthouse but there was never an appointment scheduled.
Instead, she ditched the police cruiser she was driving and is believed to have fled with Casey in a 2007 orange Ford Edge sometime early that day. She had recently submitted her retirement papers and sold her home in Lexington.
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