Man escapes jail, stops for pancakes, gets busted again with his mom, deputies say

Authorities in Georgia say a man is back behind bars after his mother helped him escape from jail, then they stopped for pancakes on their way home.

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The Heard County Sheriff's Office told WSB-TV's Berndt Petersen that Joshua Gullat was working his cleaning detail of mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms at the county jail when he slipped out a door.

Gullat, who was serving time for burglary, slipped out a side door around 11:30 p.m. Monday to a getaway car that his mother, Kathy Pence, was driving, officials said.

Investigators said that earlier that night, Gullat made a phone call instructing his mom about where to pick him up.

"And it just so happened, during that phone call, she was being stopped by the city of Franklin, because she ran a stop sign," Heard County Sgt. Dan Boswell told Petersen.

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Detectives listened to the call, which the jail records, and then talked to the Franklin police officer who pulled over Gullat's mother to learn what she was driving.

Investigators told Petersen that they tracked Pence's cellphone to a Coweta County IHOP restaurant, where they found the mother and son in a booth.

"He said they were sitting at the table eating. He was sitting with two of his kids at the table. His mom, him and two of his children," Boswell said.

Detectives said the children are now with their mother.

Deputies said Gullat was about to be transferred to a work-release program. Instead, he will likely face more jail time, along with his mother, they said.

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