Fugitive from Calif. arrested by deputies

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By Linwood Outlaw III -- loutlaw@nvdaily.com

FRONT ROYAL -- A man arrested by Warren County deputies this week after giving them a fake name during a routine traffic stop had a good reason for concealing his identity.

It turns out 44-year-old Thomas Rufus Williams is wanted in California on drug charges that date back to early last year.

Williams, of 303 E. Fifth St., Los Angeles, is being held without bond in the Warren County Jail, and was charged with possessing a fictitious driver's license and providing false identification to a law enforcement officer after deputies pulled him over on Interstate 66 early Tuesday morning to question him about a cracked taillight on his 1990 Cadillac.

Deputy Chad D. Lamma noticed that the Cadillac had Washington, D.C., tags and asked Williams for his driver's license. Lamma grew suspicious when Williams gave him a license "that did not appear consistent with" an identification card furnished by a passenger who was in the car with him, according to a news release issued by the Warren County Sheriff's Office on Friday. "On [the] driver's ID, [the] script was blurred and [the] photo was not very clear. I also noticed [the California] state seal was a different size [from the passenger's ID]," Lamma wrote in a criminal complaint filed in Warren County General District Court.

Lamma asked Williams to step out of the vehicle and noticed that the suspect was taller than the height listed on the license. California highway patrol officers told Lamma that Williams' identification was most likely fake.

Williams told the deputy his name was Earl Walker, and said he didn't know his own Social Security number, according to the criminal complaint. Williams also told Lamma that he had been arrested in the past, but "had no criminal history."

"[Williams] could not produce any documents with his name on it, but had numerous documents with another man's name," Lamma says in the complaint. "I asked [Williams] numerous times to tell me who he was. He stated that he was Earl Walker every time."

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department confirmed that Williams was wanted by California authorities on charges of unlawfully transporting, selling or distributing dangerous drugs, charges that date back to February 2008, according to court records. Lamma obtained a fugitive warrant for Williams, and he is awaiting extradition. Williams is scheduled to appear in General District Court for a hearing on Nov. 18.