It’s been one week since Putnam County Sheriff’s Office deputies chased a naked man through the woods and later arrested him clad in a beekeeper’s suit he had found. Today, deputies once again found themselves searching the woods for another naked man, Sheriff Howard Sills said.
“There’s a naked outbreak,” Sills quipped. “I haven’t seen anything like it since the great streaking of 1974.”
Around 6:15 a.m. today (Feb. 27), a resident on North Steel Bridge Road called the sheriff’s office and reported seeing a naked man in a neighbor’s boathouse. The man was gone when deputies arrived, but a phone call from another resident let them know the streaker was across the cove on an undeveloped piece of property.
“Deputies eventually made it around to that area and did spot him, but he ran away into the woods as they seem to like to do,” Sills said.
Once again, a search ensued on the property, which Sills said is a hunting camp. Deputies Sgt. Jim Barbee and Scott Owens found him in those woods later in the afternoon.
“He did have on a cap or visor earlier in the day when he was first seen, but at the time of his arrest, he had on nothing but what the Lord put him out with,” Sills said.
The man reportedly gave the deputies a false name, but he was eventually identified as Bradley Kelly Rutledge, 36, of Senoia. Sills said Rutledge has an extensive criminal record, has outstanding warrants in two other counties, and was out on bond from Baldwin County.
See next week’s The Eatonton Messenger for the complete story.