By Mark LaFlamme,Staff Writer

GRAY – Federal agents caught up with Jesse Caron on Tuesday as the fugitive went into a bar to ask his mother for money.

Caron was arrested on more than a half dozen warrants charging him with drug and weapons crimes and other offenses. Since January, police had been searching for the 28-year-old Lewiston man, who has been featured on the national television show “America’s Most Wanted.”

At about 1 p.m., agents from the Central Maine Violent Crimes Task Force saw Caron and his 18-year-old girlfriend pull up to the bar in a stolen Jeep Cherokee, police said.

Agents went into the bar where they captured Caron, who was found with a .45-caliber handgun, police said. Caron did not put up resistance.

“He made the comment that he’s glad it’s over,” said Chris Clifford, a U.S. marshal and coordinator of the task force.

Caron was taken to the Cumberland County Jail in Portland. His girlfriend, 18-year-old Amber Smith, was arrested on a charge of hindering apprehension.

Police in Lewiston and elsewhere across the state had been following up tips as they sought to bring Caron into custody.

Investigators said they missed capturing the fugitive by minutes in some cases. Task force Special Agent Trevor Campbell and others from that department put in hundreds of hours searching for Caron since the start of the year.

“It was great police work,” said Lewiston police Deputy Chief Michael Bussiere. “Trevor and the others pursued these leads relentlessly.”

Campbell and a team of other officers were staking out the bar in Gray Tuesday after learning that Caron might visit, police said. The team entered the business with caution: From the start, police said they had information that Caron was armed with a handgun, the .45 he was found with on Tuesday.

The deputy chief said the search for Caron was bolstered by tips generated by the fugitive’s appearance on “America’s Most Wanted” earlier this month.

“We’re glad that it ended the way it did, and that nobody got hurt,” Bussiere said. “There were indications that Mr. Caron had been getting increasingly desperate.”

The capture ends a month-long search for the fugitive. Police had been searching for Caron since the start of the year when he failed to show up in court to answer to numerous charges.

The case against him began shortly after Halloween when police went to Caron’s home to investigate a report from a woman who said she had been drugged and raped at a party there.

When police searched the home, investigators said they found powdered and crack cocaine and an assault rifle. When they went back to arrest him in January, Caron and his girlfriend fled through a back window, police said.

In recent weeks, police said Caron used bogus checks to pay for at least a half-dozen cars he used to slip away from his pursuers. Those matters were still being investigated.

“I fully expect that more charges will be forthcoming,” Bussiere said.

On Tuesday, Caron was charged with numerous counts of aggravated trafficking in narcotics and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was expected to remain at the Cumberland County Jail Tuesday night.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the “America’s Most Wanted” Web site had been updated to reflect that Caron had been taken into custody.

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