EATONTON, Ga. — Jim Mallet won’t soon forget what he witnessed Tuesday morning when he spotted a state prison transit bus stopped in the roadway of Ga. Route 16 not far from his home at Lake Oconee in Putnam County.

“When I rode by, somebody hollered out, ‘Help,’” Mallet, a retiree, told The Milledgeville, Georgia, Union-Recorder. “I heard them, so I reluctantly backed up and got out of my truck and talked with them. They said, ‘Call 911.’”

Mallet said he quickly walked back to his pickup truck and dialed for help.

“I sat there for a while and still didn’t know what had happened,” Mallet said. “But I kept watching in the mirror. The driver was not moving at all. So my thought was — it’s a medical emergency.”

What Mallet did not yet know was that inmates Donnie Russell Rowe, 43, and Ricky Dubose, 24, had shot and killed two state corrections officers on the bus before making their escape, according to investigators.

Mallet got back out of his truck, thinking he might be able to render some sort of aid. The first thing he recalled seeing was a lot of blood.

“I knew then that something else had happened,” Mallet said. “Then they hollered the gun is on the side of the road, which is where it was at.”

Mallet then saw that two officers had been shot.

“Obviously, nothing could be done for them,” he lamented.

Mallet said it appeared to him that the inmates aboard the bus were trying to be helpful.

“But in my mind, I didn’t know what had happened, and I didn’t know if the shooter was still on the bus,” he said. “Obviously, there were shots fired, because there was windows that had been shot. I saw the one guard close to the door blocking the door and then the driver, who was still in his seat not moving.”

Mallet admitted that what he had witnessed frightened him.

“I was scared, because I just didn’t know,” Mallet said, noting that one of the inmates on the bus told him that one of the escapees had run toward a wooded area, away from the roadway. “They said, ‘He ran that away.’”

In order to protect himself as best he could, Mallet said he got back into his truck and waited for deputies with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office to arrive.

Mallet learned that the two state corrections officers on the bus had been overpowered by two inmates, who later shot the guards to death before they fled the scene.

Mallet said he originally had planned to go to a local building supply store to get some items and then go to a local restaurant for a meeting.

The manhunt for the inmates continues after the escapees reportedly left the area in a carjacked vehicle. 

According to an Associated Press report, Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said the two inmates “thoroughly ransacked” a house in Madison, about 25 miles north of where the escape happened, several hours after the guards were killed. Sills says they took some food and likely some clothes and left their prison uniforms behind.

Authorities are now also reportedly checking the Hartwell, Danielsville and Elbert County areas.

Dubose is serving a possible 20-year sentence for theft, armed robbery, and aggravated assault stemming from an Elbert County incident in 2014. Previously, he was convicted of theft, entering a vehicle, and several counts of financial identity fraud in a series of crimes committed in 2010.

Rowe, who also is known by the alias “Whiskey,” was serving a possible life-sentence without parole for two counts of aggravated assault, one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime and two counts of armed robbery following crimes in 2001.

Hobbs writes for The Milledgeville, Georgia Union-Recorder.