Man arrested for killing wrongly blamed on bear

A man charged with murder after a 911 call about a fake bear attack in the Tennessee mountains led to authorities finding a dead man in October has been found and arrested, police said Sunday.

The arrest of Nicholas Wayne Hamlett, 45, in Columbia, South Carolina, ends a manhunt that began after a call to 911 in Monroe County in late October.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said it was notified Sunday that Hamlett, who was wanted for first-degree murder, was located and arrested in South Carolina.

“The sharing of Hamlett’s wanted poster has resulted in the public, who is our most valuable resource, acting as our eyes and ears,” Monroe County Sheriff Tommy J. Jones II said in a statement.

The case began when a man claiming to be Brandon Andrade called 911 and claimed he was injured after being chased by a bear and falling off a cliff, authorities said.

This call was made in the area of ​​the Charles Hall Bridge on the Cherahola Skyway in Tellico Plains, a small mountain town in Tennessee with a population of about 800.

A body was found with an ID belonging to Brandon Kristopher Andrade – but it wasn’t him, and Andrade’s identity had been stolen and used multiple times, the sheriff’s office said.

The person was also not killed by a bear, officials said.

“When investigators saw the body, the injuries that the deceased had sustained were not consistent with a bear attack, not consistent with a fall,” Jones said at a news conference in October. The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head, he said.

“It was very easy to rule out,” Jones said.

An arrest warrant was issued for Hamlett on a first-degree murder charge after investigators determined that Hamlett, wanted for a probation violation in Alabama, had used that stolen ID before the body was found.

The dead man was later identified as Steven Douglas Lloyd, a 34-year-old who authorities said had been friends with Hamlett over the summer, NBC affiliate WBIR in Knoxville reported.

Hamlett was arrested in South Carolina after a hospital employee recognized him and alerted authorities, the Columbia Police Department said. Fingerprints confirmed his identity, police said.

Hamlett was in custody Sunday and arrangements were being made for his extradition to Tennessee, Columbia police said.

It was not clear whether Hamlett had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. His case did not appear to be available online in Monroe County court records Monday.