BOONEVILLE -- Ray Gack remembers the day more than 15 years ago when he received a 911 call to a field in rural Logan County.

A man had shot his ex-wife in the back of the head with a rifle while she sat in a truck. He then fled to a nearby field, screamed for police to arrest him and willingly surrendered.

"It changed the dynamic of our community," said Gack, now a lead investigator with the Logan County sheriff's office. "It was a real eye-opener. We're not a high-crime county."

Timothy Buffington, 47, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for first-degree murder. He spent much of that time in the state prison system until he escaped -- with a shotgun -- two weeks ago. Since then, the Arkansas Department of Correction, the Arkansas State Police, the Arkansas National Guard, the U.S. Marshals Service, the state Game and Fish Commission and local authorities have joined forces to find him, said Shea Wilson, Correction Department spokesman.

But he's still missing.

Buffington is among 83 inmates who have escaped from the state prison system since 1996, when the electronic inmate-tracking system started. Only 11 others have evaded capture longer than Buffington, according to records obtained from the Correction Department.

In addition to scouring the 25-mile radius surrounding the Pine Bluff prison grounds -- from the Princeton Pike exit on Interstate 530 to the Grant County line -- the Correction Department is monitoring Booneville, a town where Buffington resided and murdered Rhonda Combs. Buffington's last known address in Booneville is now just a lot filled with rusting cars, but he has relatives in the area, according to locals.

A couple of miles away, a white Correction Department van with tinted windows is parked in an old gas station where officers around the clock watch the house of one of Buffington's children.

Aside from the increased presence of state troopers and Correction Department officers, things have remained calm for Booneville's 4,000 residents. On a recent afternoon, people milled about its two-block downtown area, where they embraced neighbors and asked about sick friends and relatives.

Lance Brown has lived in Booneville his whole life. He said Buffington's crime in 1998 shocked the community, what he called "a small and friendly town," but Brown is not nervous about Buffington's return.

"If he's smart, he wouldn't come back," said Brown, 46, a heating and air contractor. "I think he's out of state, but there are some people [the victim's family] who think he may come back to plot his revenge and wipe them all out."

Wayne Fletcher is another person who's been on edge lately. Fletcher, who also lives in Logan County, dated Buffington's ex-wife and was in the truck with her when Buffington opened fire. He testified against Buffington at his trial.

"I'm pretty worried," said Fletcher, 36, who works on a drilling rig. "When all this happened, if I wasn't there, he may have gotten away with it."

Fletcher said he learned of Buffington's escape on Facebook and has not received any special protection from the Correction Department or local authorities.

Even if Buffington returned to Booneville, residents said enough people would recognize him immediately and contact authorities.

"We have no sighting or indication to believe that he's in the area, but it's always a possibility because he needs money to live and food to eat and has relatives in the area," said Gack, who arrested Buffington in 1998

For Gack, Buffington's escape is a mystery. The convicted murderer was granted trusty status, a distinction for a clean disciplinary record, in 2003, and he was on track to be released in 2018.

"It makes no sense to me," Gack said. "If in fact he was this model prisoner -- he gets up and leaves and takes a gun?"

Because of his trusty status, Buffington was allowed to work outside the prison's secure perimeter doing gardening and maintenance work. On the evening of June 21, while working in a house on the prison grounds, Buffington held a prison employee hostage, broke into a safe room by kicking down a deadbolted door, stole a shotgun and fled. Since Buffington was not convicted of capital murder or sex offenses, he was eligible for trusty status -- a policy Gack questions.

"He wasn't in prison because he missed Sunday School -- he was there for a violent crime," Gack said. "You can pick and choose who you use as a trusty, but somebody with that record of crime, personally, I wouldn't have done it."

For now, the Correction Department is focused on finding Buffington but will conduct a full review of the escape at a later point, Wilson said. She did not know whether that review will examine the trusty system as a whole, which includes more than 1,700 prisoners statewide.

Metro on 07/05/2014