ASHEVILLE, N.C. — A two-day, two-state manhunt ended quietly early on Tuesday, November 10, when a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force arrested Travis Shaquann Fair, 36, at a hotel off Tunnel Road in Asheville, North Carolina, the U.S. Marshals Service said. Fair was taken back into custody without incident and is being held at a local detention center in Western North Carolina, which the Marshals did not name.
Source: U.S. Marshals Service
Fair was wanted by the Marshals Service's District of South Carolina for escaping the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He walked away from Federal Correctional Institution Edgefield, in Edgefield, South Carolina, on Sunday, November 8, and had been evading capture ever since, the Marshals said. He was serving an 80-month federal prison term — six years and eight months — for possession of a firearm by a felon, a conviction and sentence handed down in the Western District of North Carolina.
Source: U.S. Marshals Service
A two-state manhunt ends at a Tunnel Road hotel
Because Fair fled across a state line, the hunt ran through two Marshals districts. The District of South Carolina asked the Marshals' Western District of North Carolina office — its Asheville Division — for help locating and arresting him, the Marshals said. Working alongside the Carolinas Regional Fugitive Task Force (CRFTF), the Asheville Police Department and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), investigators developed information that Fair was hiding in a hotel off Tunnel Road, the busy commercial corridor on Asheville's east side lined with hotels, restaurants and chain stores.
Source: U.S. Marshals Service
Marshals located Fair at the hotel in the early morning hours of November 10 and arrested him there. The service stressed that the arrest happened without incident — no chase, no injuries and no shots fired — a notably calm ending for the capture of an escaped federal prisoner. Local television station WLOS, Asheville's ABC affiliate, also reported the capture of the South Carolina federal prison escapee in Asheville on Tuesday.
Source: U.S. Marshals Service
The gun case behind the 80-month sentence
Fair's prison term traces back to a June 10, 2019 visit to a licensed firearms dealer in Asheville. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina, Fair — who already had a criminal conviction and was legally barred from buying or possessing firearms — consulted a store employee about purchasing a 'cheap' firearm, and his girlfriend, Kourtney Nichelle Shivers, acted as a straw buyer to obtain the gun for him. Shivers later pleaded guilty to making a false statement in connection with the acquisition of a firearm, and Fair pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm by a felon.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina
At sentencing, Fair received 80 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, U.S. Attorney Dena J. King announced at the time. The investigation was led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Charlotte Field Division, whose acting special agent in charge was Brian Mein, with assistance from the Asheville Police Department under Chief David Zack. It is that 80-month term Fair was still serving at FCI Edgefield when he escaped on November 8.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of North Carolina
Fair is an Asheville man, convicted in Asheville's federal court — so when he escaped from a South Carolina prison, he fled back to home ground, about one mountain region away. Fugitive investigators know escapees most often run toward family, friends and familiar streets, which is why the Asheville Division, the city police and the state SBI were watching the Tunnel Road hotel strip.
What happens next
Fair is currently in custody at a local detention center in Western North Carolina, the Marshals said, and the normal next step is transfer back into Federal Bureau of Prisons custody to resume serving the remainder of his 80-month sentence. Escaping from federal custody is itself a separate federal crime, so prosecutors could bring an additional charge on top of his gun sentence — but the Marshals Service announced no new charges on Tuesday, and no court date for Fair has been made public yet.
Source: U.S. Marshals Service
The Marshals Service says its district offices lead fugitive task forces that arrest tens of thousands of fugitives every year — hundreds every day — through partnerships with federal, state, tribal and local agencies. Tuesday's arrest was a textbook example of that model: a South Carolina escape warrant, a North Carolina task force, a city police department and a state investigative bureau closing in on a single hotel room before most of Asheville was awake.