Blinded by love and bold in the way only youth can be, 13-year-old Cheyenne Phillips told her mother: “We’re just going to run.” So began an extraordinary five-state, 15-day spree that riveted the nation and had pundits calling two All-American kids from Kentucky “the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.”
All told, Cheyenne and Dalton Hayes, 18, stole three vehicles, papered stores with stolen checks, broke into homes and ducked untold officers on foot and in “Dukes of Hazzard”–like car chases.
“I don’t ever recall anything like this,” Todd Pate, the top lawman in Breckinridge County, Ky., told The National ENQUIRER. “It’s surprising they eluded us as long as they did.”
The teenage lovebirds’ escapade began January 3 when they vanished from Leitchfield, a “quaint town of about 8,000, where people are nice and easy to get along with,” as Grayson County Sheriff Norman Chaffins told The ENQUIRER.
They’d only dated for three months, although Dalton’s mother, Tammy Martin, said he “was already done in love with” Cheyenne.
Dalton reportedly fled ahead of a January 5 grand jury hearing on theft and burglary charges filed last year.
The couple first encountered police on the day they fled, when a deputy responded to a general store.
“There was a young man coming out, holding two slices of pizza. He gave the deputy what he believed was a fake name and at that moment, dispatch texted the officer a picture,” Todd said.
“As the deputy reached for his phone, Dalton takes up running. We lost sight of him. But officers said they later saw the same person holding another person’s hand, hurrying her across a field.”
Todd believes the couple holed up in a lakeside vacation cabin.
“We were flushing them from one part of the county to another and they eventually felt the heat was on and left,” he said.
On January 11, the lovebirds stole a Toyota Tundra owned by Jim McGrew from a garage in Clarkson, Ky.
“I jumped in my plane, took off and found them in 20 minutes, but they had already escaped,” after plowing the Toyota through a cattle farm, said Jim, a pilot.
Hours later, the couple swiped a Toyota Tacoma. The owner had left the keys in the ignition, along with his checkbook and a rifle.
They topped off the Tacoma’s gas tank at a North Carolina gas station, using the stolen checks as payment. They pulled a similar stunt at a South Carolina Walmart on January 12.
“They wrote a fake check for $20, plus the cost of a pack of mints,” Manning Police Chief Blair Shaffer said.
“Walmart gave them money back and when that worked, they got another pack of the same mints and did the same thing at another checkout counter. They walked out with two boxes of mints and $40.”
The two were headed for Miami, and cuddled overnight in frigid barns as they slowly moved south, according to Dalton.
On January 13, they ditched the Tacoma behind an abandoned building, then stole a third truck – a Toyota Tundra – from a home in Henry County, Ga., about 30 miles south of Atlanta.
On January 17, Navy dive instructor Steve Colford of Panama City Beach, Fla., spotted Cheyenne coming out of a store.
After midnight, U.S. Marshals surrounded the runaway teens as they held each other, asleep, in the stolen Tundra.
They were arrested without further incident and Cheyenne was placed in the care of children’s services – while Dalton was charged with being a fugitive from justice.
During a jailhouse interview, the teenaged “Clyde” told a reporter he loved Cheyenne and wanted to save her from a bad home life.
“All I had to do was tell her to go home and none of this would’ve happened,” he reportedly said.
“But, if I could go back, I’d be paying for bus rides instead of stealing trucks.”
