Escaped Brinkley Inmate Rodney Smith Captured In Lee County After 29-Hour Manhunt

MARIANNA, Ark. — Rodney Jermaine Smith, the 41-year-old convicted felon police say assaulted law enforcement officers before escaping from the Brinkley Police Department’s jail Thursday morning, was captured without incident at 12:36 p.m. Friday in Lee County, Arkansas State Police said.

Members of the state police Emergency Response Team found Smith riding as a passenger in a vehicle at a farm shop on Lee County Road 310, according to a state police news release. Troopers took Smith and the driver, Marshall Jones, into custody.

Both were questioned at the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and taken to the Arkansas Division of Correction’s East Arkansas Regional Unit in Brickeys, state police said. The release did not say whether Jones faces any charges or how Smith got from Brinkley to Lee County.

Smith had been on the run for about 29 hours. He got out around 7:15 a.m. Thursday through a back door that opens onto an employee parking lot, according to emergency radio traffic, and a surveillance camera caught him running south on New Orleans Avenue a few minutes later. State police said he assaulted law enforcement personnel and took an officer’s Taser before fleeing on foot. Friday’s release did not say whether the Taser was recovered.

The search ran through Thursday night and into Friday, according to radio traffic. Thursday afternoon, a helicopter and ground units checked fields and tree lines along Eden Road near First Street, and searchers followed up a tip that a man in a pink shirt and blue jeans might be hiding in a thicket next to the railroad tracks near the cotton gin on First Street.

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After dark, a resident’s report of something moving in a tree sent officers to a home on South Grant Street. Around 8:30 p.m., after a caller said they heard someone behind a house, two Emergency Response Team squads pushed through a block of woods between South Carter and South New York streets, from West Maple to West Willow, with the helicopter overhead. They cleared the woods, an abandoned house and a shed and found nothing. The helicopter left for Little Rock to refuel a few minutes later.

By Friday morning, tracking teams were working through woods on foot, with side-by-sides waiting at the far end, and Game and Fish officers were asked to clear town on foot a block at a time, headed north from the school. They checked wooded areas, abandoned houses and an old abandoned hospital, “just knowing for sure he’s not laying in a backyard or something,” one searcher said on the radio.

At 12:35 p.m., a minute before state police say Smith was taken into custody in Lee County, Emergency Response Team members still on the main search channel were told to switch to a different channel.

The search pulled in the state police Emergency Response Team, Criminal Investigation Division, Troop D Highway Patrol and Aircraft Section, along with Brinkley police, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Arkansas Community Correction Division, Arkansas Game and Fish, and the Division of Correction’s K-9 and drone teams. On Thursday, Union Pacific halted trains through Brinkley for part of the day, and Brinkley Public Schools placed its campus on lockdown.

Smith was being held at the Brinkley jail while awaiting bed space with the Division of Correction, according to state police. State police have not said what charges he will face in connection with the escape.

Smith first entered the state prison system in January 2013 on a 15-year total sentence for Faulkner County convictions for being a felon in possession of a firearm and possessing methamphetamine or cocaine, prison records show. He also has a 2016 forgery conviction from Monroe County, and in December 2025 he pleaded guilty in Faulkner County to possession of drug paraphernalia and received four years of probation. State police said his arrest history includes aggravated robbery and domestic battery.

He is also awaiting trial in Pulaski County on charges of first-degree terroristic threatening and third-degree domestic battery from a December 2025 arrest by North Little Rock police, court records show. His jury trial is set for Jan. 20.

Earlier: Manhunt underway in Brinkley for escaped inmate police say assaulted jailer, officer