POCONO SUMMIT — Some neighbors are still shaken after they got a little too close to Kenneth Botke of Pocono Summit, who escaped from police a car Saturday night.
But overall, neighbors say they’re happy no one was injured after Botke took off.
Neighbors living on a road in the Stillwater Lakes Housing Development in Pocono Summit are still shaken from the weekend.
After, police say, Botke was arrested nearby, handcuffed, crawled through a partition in the police car, got behind the wheel and drove off.
“I thought it was a deer, the back of a deer,” said Henry Haubrick of Pocono Summit.
The man was on the loose from Saturday night into Sunday, when Henry Haubrick and his neighbors were home.
“I saw him run by and then he cut over to the other side, to Lisa’s side,” said Haubrick.
“We decide to go out, around 12 o’clock, in the yard. Me, my husband and my two daughters. We were cleaning up. Next thing you know, I see this kid walking down the side of the house,” said Lisa Curtis of Pocono Summit.
Lisa says she was outside in her backyard when she saw Botke walking alongside her home, cutting through her yard, brushing up against the bush and then he stopped to say hello to her. Then he continued walking through the backyard, through some brush, to the next door neighbors home.
“I heard a noise at my door, I turned around and there he was. He walked right into my living room,” said Robin Silliman of Pocono Summit.
Silliman says she knew right away who it was because she got an email alerting her community that Botke was on the loose.
But then Botke asked to get a ride.
“He was in the house he said he was afraid the cops were going to kill him he needed a place to hide and he wanted us to take him to Effort,” said Silliman.
But once Robin and her husband went outside to the car, the police were there with their guns drawn, to arrest Botke, again.
“I’m just so glad the cops were out there looking for him and they were right out there when it all went down so quick,” said Silliman.
Kenneth Botke is locked up.
So are two of his friends, Kyree and Khylil Caldwell of Pocono Summit, who are charged with cutting Botke’s handcuffs and taking a stolen police shotgun.
