Fugitive's WOW habit leads to arrest

Right now, Alfred Hightower must feel pretty stupid. That's because, after over a year of freedom in Canada, the fugitive drug dealer is now in US custody for one reason: he couldn't stop playing World of Warcraft.

According to an article on the local news site Kokomo Perspective, an arrest warrant was issued in 2007 for Hightower by the Howard County Sheriff's Department. He was wanted on two charges of dealing marijuana and two other charges of dealing unidentified controlled substances. However, deputies could not locate Hightower, who eventually fled to America's neighbor to the north.

Last summer, though, Howard County Sheriff's Department deputy Matt Roberson caught a break during an initiative to track down long-wanted fugitives. During the course of interviews, he learned that Hightower was a "regular player" of World of Warcraft, which is developed and published by Irvine, California-based Blizzard Entertainment.

Armed with this information and Hightower's WOW alias of "Rastlynn," Roberson sent Blizzard a subpoena asking for Hightower's location--a subpoena that couldn't be enforced, given that it was in a different state. Several months later, though, the lawman received a welcome surprise--a packet of information on the fugitive's whereabouts, including the IP address from which he was logging onto the WOW servers.

"I did a search off the IP address to locate him," Roberson told Kokomo Perspective. "I got a longitude and latitude. Then I went to Google Earth. It works wonders. It uses longitude and latitude. Boom! I had an address."

The deputy provided said address to the US Marshals, who forwarded it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Mounties went on to arrest Hightower in Ottawa, Ontario, and deport him to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he is currently awaiting transfer back to Indiana.

"Roberson did some great work on this deal," said Sheriff Marty Talbert. "This is the first time in my seven years as sheriff that a fugitive was located in Canada."