Federal authorities have taken over a kidnapping case involving a South Carolina man who was arrested following a high speed chase through Lauderdale County Wednesday night. 

Thomas Lawton Evans fled after he was spotted near Russell, leading authorities from four agencies on a chase north on Highway 45, Highway 39 and into DeKalb in Kemper County. After hitting a dead end, Evans, 37, apparently ran away on foot before deputies arrested him. 

Following his capture, details emerged about Evans’ alleged crimes in South Carolina, which include brutally beating a mother and abducting her four-year-old daughter, Heidi Todd. 

On Tuesday morning, a man attacked Heidi’s mother with a knife at her home on Johns Island, South Carolina. Later in the day, police were notified when no one picked up the two children who had been dropped off at school that morning. When authorities arrived at the home, they learned that Heidi Todd was missing.

The attacker had beaten the woman, causing facial fractures and brain bleeding, among other significant injuries, according to court papers. 

Early Wednesday morning, investigators learned a debit card belonging Heidi’s mother was used at a gas station in Greensboro, Georgia, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court.  

Later on Wednesday, railway workers in Riverside, Alabama spotted Evans and alerted police, the newspaper reported. Police retrieved Heidi Todd but Evans sped away before he could be captured.

By Wednesday night, Evans was in the custody of the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department, but FBI agents had already taken over the investigation and started making plans to transfer him to FBI custody in Jackson on Thursday, according to Ward Calhoun, chief deputy of the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office. 

Scarlett Wilson, the prosecutor in Charleston, said Evans was charged with kidnapping and that more more charges were expected. 

Investigators have not found a connection between Evans and the girl’s family and they haven’t figured out a motive for the kidnapping, officials said. 

In addition to his alleged crimes from the past two days, Evans has a 20-year history of arrests, including a 2000 charge for assaulting a 15-year-old girl when he was 19, according to the Post and Courier.

In 2002, Evans and another man grabbed a woman in downtown Charleston, attempting to take her purse and steal her groceries, the newspaper reported.  Evans was convicted and served two years on probation.

A judge sentenced Evans to 10 years following a 2009 armed robbery and burglary in two separate incidents, but the South Carolina newspaper said his criminal history didn’t end there.

While behind bars, Evans apparently held his cellmate against his will, threatened prison employees, possessed drugs and cellphones, and also had a weapon, totaling 14 disciplinary actions. 

Upon his release, however, Evans told state agencies he would live in the northern part of the state, not Charleston. Fleeing the state would be a violation of his community supervision, according to the Post and Courier in Charleston.