Murder suspect who escaped custody in Mississippi is arrested 2 months later after standoff in Chicago restaurant

A man wanted on suspicion of murder who had been on the run for two months since escaping from custody in Mississippi was arrested hundreds of miles away in Chicago after a SWAT team standoff that lasted more than 12 hours, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

Joshua Zimmerman, 30, escaped from custody at the DeSoto County Courthouse in Mississippi on June 14, where a hearing was scheduled for him, the DeSoto County Sheriff's Office said.

At the time, he was being held in the county on suspicion of armed robbery and attempted murder. He was also wanted in Texas on murder charges in September and on a parole violation in Connecticut, the Marshals Service said.

After two months on the run, he ended up in Chicago.

The Marshals Service, which took over the case, said it had searched for Zimmerman in several states and that investigators had “recently received information that Zimmerman was in Chicago.”

From there, the Marshals Service's Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force identified Zimmerman at a seafood restaurant in the 2300 block of Madison Street on Chicago's West Side, where he was “presumably working.”

During the arrest, Zimmerman retreated to the ceiling of the restaurant and barricaded himself in, the Marshals Service said.

The Chicago Police Department SWAT team also responded to a request for assistance.

Zimmerman was the only person in the restaurant, DeSoto County Sheriff's Deputy Justin Smith said at a press conference on Tuesday.

According to officials, the standoff lasted more than 12 hours until Zimmerman surrendered and was arrested at 8:30 a.m. local time (9:30 a.m. ET) on Wednesday.

The restaurant where Zimmerman barricaded himself is just half a mile from the United Center, where the Democratic National Convention was held on Monday and Tuesday. However, “there is no connection or threat to the event or attendees,” the Marshals Service said.

Mississippi authorities intend to extradite him to DeSoto County.

“We would like to bring him back to our prison so we can gather the remaining facts about his escape,” Smith said.

Zimmerman left the courthouse in June in his pajamas, walked across the street to a gas station and persuaded a man there to give him a ride to Memphis, Tennessee, NBC Chicago reported. He is believed to have had no accomplice in his escape.

DeSoto County Sheriff Thomas E. Tuggle said in a statement Wednesday that his team was on the ground in Chicago and “fully prepared to begin the next phase of our investigation.”

A $20,000 reward was offered for information leading to the search for Zimmerman. The Marshals Service described him as “armed and very dangerous.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com.