It’s unclear how long Thomas Hovis Jr. had been hiding in a vat of manure, but when Noble County SWAT officers stormed the small barn where he was holed up, they thought they had lost the drug suspect.
The long, narrow barn has an open-air trough that runs along one side of the building and flows into a vat covered by a steel grate. The setup allowed the farmers who once used the barn to spray the animal manure from the floor into a holding tank.
An officer looked down and there, through the steel grate in the floor, he could see the 52-year-old man, just his head peering out from the cesspool deep with frigid feces, said Chief Deputy Doug Harp of the Noble County Sheriff’s Department. “The pig operation hadn’t been in there for a while, but the previous tenant had been using it for dog kennels,” Harp said.
Police believe Hovis had been using the manure pit for his dogs, too. Harp said he had no idea the last time the pit had been pumped out or cleaned.
Hiding in a vat filled with liquid sludge might be a new depth for Hovis, but it wasn’t the first time he eluded police. In the 1980s, he fled to Florida, trying to escape a murder charge. Police eventually caught up to him when he was arrested after a barroom fight. In 1982, he was convicted of stomping a 40-year-old cabdriver to death in Fort Wayne and served 15 years in prison.
About 6 p.m. Tuesday, the Noble County Special Operations Group – the county’s SWAT team – raided the farm at 866 W. U.S. 6 near Albion, where Hovis was living with his girlfriend.
He was wanted on several warrants – including manufacturing methamphetamine and possession of a firearm – from Steuben County after he eluded authorities there, police said.
When officers pulled up to the scene, he was playing with his dogs outside the barn, Harp said.
Hovis had nowhere to run except into the pig barn. Officers later found three handguns and an assault rifle – as well as Hovis’ girlfriend – in the farmhouse, Harp said.
After trying to call Hovis outside and firing two volleys of tear gas, officers raided the building. That was when they found Hovis had pulled up the grate covering the manure pit, jumped in and pulled the grate back over the pit.
Officers initially thought they had lost him when they went in. Hovis’ aggressive dogs were all they saw. Harp said he’s unsure how long Hovis was in the pit, but he suspects it was about an hour.
When sheriff’s deputies pulled him out, Hovis resisted and had to be stunned with a Taser to be placed under arrest, Harp said.
As soon as police took him into custody, he began shaking and talking incoherently. Apparently, Harp said, Hovis had been in the frigid pool of feces so long that his body temperature dropped dangerously low and he showed signs of hypothermia.
Medics cut Hovis’ clothes off, strapped him to a gurney and took him to Parkview Noble Hospital for treatment.
Immediately after Hovis was in custody, Harp said a debate began among the officers at the scene: Which sheriff’s deputy would load Hovis into his police cruiser and take him from the hospital to jail?
The Steuben County deputies maintained that because police had found three meth labs, 18 marijuana plants, 3 grams of meth and the weaponry in his Noble County home, Hovis would face charges there first, Harp said.
Ultimately, a Steuben deputy drew the short straw, since Noble County’s charges against Hovis wouldn’t be ready until after he got out of the hospital, Harp said.
Hovis was being held at the Steuben County Jail without bail on charges of manufacturing meth, possession of meth, maintaining a common nuisance, possession of a controlled substance, possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, being a habitual offender, being a habitual substance offender, three counts of possession of marijuana and two counts of possession of paraphernalia.
“I have seen people hide in baby cribs and crawl spaces. … I have never seen anybody hide in a liquid manure pit,” Harp said. “That’s a first.”
