Convicted murderer captured near prison where he escaped

    LEAKESVILLE, Mississippi (WAPT) -- Convicted murderer Drew Johnson, who escaped from a Mississippi state prison on Christmas Eve, has been captured, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Officials said he was captured in an area near the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, where he had escaped.

The convicted murderer broke out of the South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville on Tuesday around 3:30 p.m., according to an alert from the Greene County Emergency Management office, shared by police in neighboring George County.

Johnson is serving life for a murder in Rankin County. He was sentenced on Valentine's Day 2022.

The 33-year-old has a violent criminal history spanning multiple states. In 2022, he also pleaded guilty to a series of unrelated violent crimes, according to a news release from Tennessee's Shelby County district attorney's office.

In 2016, Johnson fatally stabbed an acquaintance more than two dozen times, later abandoning the victim's body in a field in southwest Memphis.

His violent behavior persisted behind bars. While incarcerated in Tennessee in 2021, Johnson attacked another prisoner, repeatedly hitting him in the head with a brick, according to the district attorney's office. Johnson also pleaded guilty to setting multiple fires while in jail in 2019.

Johnson received a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder, along with 15-year sentences for each of his other crimes, all of which are to be served concurrently, according to Shelby County district attorney's office.