Cannon Truck Driver Accused of Kidnapping

A truck driver for Springdale-based Cannon Express Inc. was arrested April 20 in Dublin, Ga., after an Alabama woman scrawled a message pleading for help on a bathroom wall in Tennessee.

The note written with a black marker stated: “Won’t let me out. Beating me, this is no joke. Cannon truck 383.”

Police found Katina L. Shaddix, 24, that day in the cab of a truck at a rest stop on Interstate 16 in Georgia. She told police she had been beaten on several occasions by Shannon E. Jones, 26, of Delphi, N.Y., and held against her will in his tractor-trailer rig for six months. In the truck, police found a broken-off car antenna that Shaddix said Jones had used to beat her.

She remained hospitalized in Dublin, Ga., the week after the incident. Police said she was bruised and appeared to have hairline fractures.

Shaddix had scrawled the message on a bathroom in a rest area on Interstate 75 in McMinn County, Tenn. The Associated Press reported that Shaddix hid the marker in her sock and left messages in 30 bathrooms from New York to Tennessee before anyone attempted to help her.

Binford Aycock, a maintenance worker at the Tennessee rest stop, found the message on the wall the night of April 19 and called 9-1-1.

Cannon Express was contacted, and the location of truck 383 was quickly pinpointed by using Cannon’s satellite global positioning system.

Jones — a 6-foot tall, 260-pound truck driver — is being held without bond in the Laurens County, Ga., jail on a charge of aggravated assault.

Cannon Express officials said Jones had been hired on Jan. 4. He was hauling a load of light bulbs to a Wal-Mart store in Douglas, Ga., when the arrest occurred.

The company’s president, Dean Cannon, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Jones and Shaddix signed a company form on Jan. 10 authorizing her as a rider in Jones’ truck.

“Thank God they were able to capture him and save the victim,” Cannon said. “There was nothing in his history that would have indicated anything like this.”