Inmate Walks Off The Job Monday

Jimmy Lee Putt

WATER VALLEY – A “resident” from the Mississippi Department of Corrections restitution center program walked off the job at Water Valley Poultry Monday prompting a search that culminated with his capture the next day in Clay County.
Jimmy Lee Putt, who was convicted in June of grand larceny, didn’t return with other workers after a break Monday morning at the poultry processing plant on Lafayette Street.
Water Valley and Yalo-busha County law enforcement officials were notified by MDOC of the escape at 10:48 a.m., according to radio traffic.
Sheriff Lance Humphreys said Putt had just started working at the poultry plant as part of his state-ordered restitution program and was being bused to the plant from Greenwood each day. “He had been there about a week,” Humphreys added.
The sheriff said MDOC will send Putt back to the county on Wednesday and he will appear before a judge in Circuit Court next Monday in Coffeeville.
Putt was one of 26 state inmates – referred to as residents by the MDOC – currently working at the poultry plant from the Greenwood Restitution Center.
Putt, a Grenada resident, confessed in June during a phone call with Humphreys to taking two chainsaws, two batteries and a grinder from a shop owned by Dunavant Farms near Tillatoba around the end of May. The stolen items were recovered from a pawnshop in Grenada.
Putt’s cousin, Jimmy Ott, also of Grenada was charged with burglary and grand larceny after pawnshop records linked him to the missing items.
The restitution program provides an alternative to incarceration for minimal risk offenders who are in need of a more structured environment, according to the MDOC website. The state has four restitution centers including the one in Greenwood where Putt was housed.
The other three centers are located in Hinds County (Jackson), Jackson County (Pascagoula), and Rankin County (Flowood).