The Police News
March 9, 2010

FRIENDSWOOD - Joe Thornburg runs from cops.  Everyone, especially the police, know that when Thornburg see's them coming, he's going to split.

One day last year the police chased him all over parts of Galveston, Brazoria and Harris counties before he finally jumped off a Gulf Freeway Bridge into Clear Creek.  He was finally fished from the water, clad only in his undershorts, by Friendswood Police in an airboat.

Last week the police got after Joe again and again Joe saw them coming.  He was in a second floor apartment in Pearland when they cornered him but that didn't stop him from running.  He ran right out of a second floor window and landed, head first, on the concrete parking lot below.

It wasn't a soft landing this time and Thornburg wound up in a Houston hospital for a couple of day.  When the hospital released him he was booked into the Galveston County Jail with his new neck brace and bandages.

27-year old Joe Thornburg, an Alvin resident, was tracked to Pearland on a probation violation warrant stemming from a drug conviction.  His leap to fame got him a head and neck injury, a fractured collar bone and some other cuts and bruises and he still ended up right back where he started, in jail.

Breck Porter