The 106th annual Lincoln County Fair in Fayetteville, Ten., featured some raucous Demolition Derby action Tuesday night, but that’s nothing! 25-year-old Sarah Marie Armstrong, a carnival worker at the fair, was pulled over in Fayetteville just after midnight Wednesday. Police discovered she had several felony warrants from the state of Virginia, so they arrested her and detained her in the police cruiser.
As the Fayetteville policeman, Lt. Joel Massey, questioned another person in her car, Armstrong managed to squeeze through the narrow dividing window into the front seat of the police car where she was being held. She then proceeded to steal the car and lead the police on a high-speed chase down US 231/431 southbound.
Armstrong was finally captured after a high-speed chase toward the Alabama state line, but not before she crashed the stolen cruiser. She was the second fugitive connected to the Lincoln County Fair to be arrested this week. Although the fair screens all its local volunteer employees, Armstrong was employed by a contractor, Belle City Amusements , a company out of Florida that provide rides and equipment to fairs around the southeastern United States.
While folks in small-town Fayetteville seemed genuinely shocked by this occurrence, the fugitive phenomenon isn’t all that unusual in the carnival industry. The term “carny” has had a connotative meaning akin to “criminal” for many years now, and statistics have often borne out the high percentage of offenders who are employed in this industry. In 2005, a background check by the Illinois attorney general’s office turned up 556 arrests and 125 convictions among 179 carnival employees checked.
This is not to say your average carnival worker is going to have a rap sheet or outstanding warrants. The stereotype often hinders those honest men and women who make carnival work a career or who are working in a carnival for many reasons. The itinerant “carny” lifestyle certainly does seem to offer advantages to those who may have trouble finding work in other areas, however.
A fugitive might gravitate toward this line of work simply because being always on the move would confound attempts to find and incarcerate the person. Drug and alcohol abusers may end up in a carnival because of inability to find other kinds of work, and some of the more unscrupulous types might take advantage of short stays in many towns to commit crimes and be on their way before they can be apprehended.
Carnival work is grueling and not for the faint of heart; it involves heavy lifting, long hours, and an ability to adapt to a transient lifestyle. This is probably one aspect of the job that contributes to its high turnover. High rate of turnover makes it difficult for a company to institute rigid background checks. For a fugitive, staying on the move is necessary to avoid capture. Thus, it seems the carny lifestyle is tailor-made for those attempting to evade the law.
WAFF.com, “Carnival worker steals police cruiser, leads officers on chase”, http://www.wsmv.com/story/15458995/woman-steals-police-cruiser-leads-officers-on-chase
Chicagoist.com, “The Carny Code”, http://chicagoist.com/2005/09/06/the_carny_code.php