ATLANTA — The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that a convicted killer who was mistakenly released from a Georgia jail has been caught two weeks later in Florida — ending days of anxiety for the victim's family outside Orlando who feared he might harm them over their role in the trial.
Kathan Guzman, 22, was supposed to spend the rest of his life in prison after admitting he strangled his girlfriend, 19-year-old Delila Grayson, who was found dead in a bathtub in August 2022, Clayton County Sheriff Levon Allen told WSB-TV.
However, jail workers in the county south of Atlanta mistakenly released Guzman on March 27 because they didn't read paperwork carefully, failing to see that he'd been convicted of murder and assault by strangulation, the sheriff told the broadcaster. In a statement Friday, he said disciplinary actions are pending and firings are on the table.
Guzman told someone after being freed that ''God is good'' and he believed his release was the result of a higher power, the sheriff told WSB.
The victim's mother, Christina Grayson, wasn't told her daughter's murderer was on the loose until Tuesday, after the district attorney learned of it, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
''I feel like I'm a sitting duck,'' Grayson told WFTV-TV in Orlando.
Her family was sleeping in shifts so that someone was awake at all times, she told the broadcaster, and deputies in Osceola County patrolled her neighborhood as the search continued.
Guzman was arrested ''without incident'' Friday at a residence in Ocoee, near Orlando, the U.S. Marshals Service said. Booking records showed he was being held in the Orange County Jail.
