Sonny NealDALTON, Ga. – As police were hunting for suspected killer Adolph “Sonny” Neal nearly a week after his wife and her grandfather’s deaths, Dia Chastain spotted a man who looked like him walking down Highway 201 in Varnell.
Chastain said she was reading a Chattanooga Times Free Press article about Neal on Wednesday when she looked up from her iPhone and spotted the 49-year-old in a red T-shirt and blue jeans, sweat pouring down his face. She immediately recognized him because she is also a customer at the Neals’ tanning salon.
“That’s the guy,” she shouted to her husband, Gilbert.
Gilbert Chastain hustled his wife to the Varnell police station and then drove by the spot again, spotting Neal darting toward the woods.
Neal hid out and eluded more than 100 law enforcement officers, some with heavy equipment or tracking dogs, some in a helicopter. But someone else spotted him in the same area Thursday and police found him hiding in the woods.