A garbage truck driver for the city of Columbus was jailed Thursday after he allowed a Muscogee County Prison inmate to meet a woman at the dead end of Hunter Road, police said.
Edward Leroy Waldrop, the driver, and the woman, Ashley Brummett of Macon, Ga., each faces a felony count of aiding escape of prisoner Michael Crook. Waldrop, 40, waived his Recorder’s Court hearing today while Brummett, 29, pleaded not guilty to the charge. Her bond was set at $5,000 and the charge was bound over to Muscogee Superior Court.
Crook faces a separate hearing on additional charges in Municipal Court.
Pamela Muncy, who lives on Hunter Road, said she called her brother, a city employee, after her boyfriend saw a prison employee leave the garbage truck about 11:30 a.m. and enter a black GMC Yukon parked nearby.
“I called my brother Tony Perry and asked if a prisoner is allowed to get in a truck,” Muncy said after the hearing. “He said hell no. Where are they at.”
After a call from her brother, Muncy said it took about five minutes to get a supervisor at the scene.
Police officer J.L. Gragg told the court that Brummett had known Crook about four years and she missed him. She drove to Columbus to meet him.
