By By Adam Prestridge
special to the standard
Investigators with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office were on a manhunt Tuesday afternoon in Pensacola, Fla., looking for a former Atmore resident wanted for murder.
Sheriff Grover Smith said authorities went to serve an open charge of murder on 42-year-old Bruce Edward Day at his construction job where he has been working for the past year. When they arrived, Day was nowhere to be found.
Day is charged with the murder of 25-year-old Woodrow Judge “Token” Allen, who went missing in December 2001.
Smith said authorities, including the U.S. Marshal’s office, have been looking for the suspect for the past couple of days and issued a warrant Monday for his arrest.
Newspaper articles from 2002 show Day was convicted of reckless endangerment in September of that year. He was charged with attempted murder and one count of shooting into an occupied vehicle that was driven by Allen. In that incident — which happened a month before Allen went missing — Allen was driving with passenger 16-year-old Sarah Kersey when the passenger side window was shattered by gunfire. Officials said Day was the triggerman. Kersey testified that Allen sped up, but the car got “bogged down in some sand” and they fled the car on foot.
When Allen was reported missing a month later, foul play was suspected.
The campus of the University of West Florida was on lockdown for a few hours Tuesday afternoon as authorities searched for the suspect, according to Pensacola television stations.
The lockdown was later lifted.
Allen, a 25-year-old white male, was last seen walking through a stretch of woods between his house in Nokomis and a friend’s house in a nearby trailer park. Former Escambia County Sheriff Tim Hawsey said it was a walk Allen took on numerous occasions.