Quaweay

PROVIDENCE –– A wanted man from Rhode Island with a long criminal history looked out the window of an apartment in Atlanta on Tuesday morning and saw the cops waiting.

Jonathan Quaweay tried to run. This time, he didn’t get far.

His flight from the law that began after he allegedly shot up the Sportsman’s Inn and Gentleman’s Club in Providence in March ended more than three months and 1,000 miles later, shortly after his case was broadcast on the national TV show America’s Most Wanted.

Quaweay is a veteran of fights that end badly –– fighting with Providence police at Central High School, stabbing a Navy seaman in Newport –– and has a record of arrests on drugs, stolen cars, and first-degree robberies in Rhode Island alone. He’s also known to police in Georgia, for forgery and drunken-driving charges.

On March 24, the Providence police said, Quaweay added shootings to his repertoire.

He was at the Sportsman’s Inn, a strip club/hotel in downtown Providence, and heading upstairs to a room with his girlfriend when the manager yelled at him for spilling beer on his head. The manager thought Quaweay had urinated on him.

The argument turned into a fight, with other patrons beating up Quaweay, who left and returned with a gun. The police say Quaweay ran up the steps and blasted into the crowd gathered in the lobby, shooting a bartender, an exotic dancer, a patron, and hitting the boot of one of the employees.

The shooting victims survived.

Quaweay was on the run.

Detective Michael Otrando soon pieced together information that tied Quaweay to the shooting, said Maj. Thomas Oates. The Providence police began searching for him, checking his haunts throughout Rhode Island, until tips that he’d moved on to Virginia and Georgia, where he has some family ties, led them to contact the U.S. Marshals Service for help.

At the same time, staff at the America’s Most Wanted contacted Oates and offered to help find Quaweay by profiling the strip-club shooting on the show. Police Sgt. William Dwyer, who was also working the case, gave the crew information about the shooting.

The segment about Quaweay aired on America’s Most Wanted on June 13 and included a picture of him taken during his last arrest. It didn’t take long for someone to recognize him.

On Monday, the show’s producers relayed a tip to the Rhode Island deputy marshals that sent them straight to Quaweay’s door. The tipster had the address of the residence where he was staying, at 1185 Collier Rd., 19B, in Atlanta. The South East Regional Fugitive Task Force, from the U.S. Marshals Service, set up surveillance on Tuesday morning.

As they started moving in, Quaweay looked out the window and tried to run, Oates said. “He made it about 200 yards,” Oates said.

Quaweay is currently being held at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta awaiting an extradition hearing for his return to Rhode Island to answer to the pending criminal charges, four counts of assault with a dangerous weapon.

The day after his arrest, the Providence police thanked the U.S. Marshals and America’s Most Wanted for bringing Quaweay in. “I can’t say enough about the local Marshals Service,” Oates said.

amilkovi@projo.com