A 33-year-old Cartersville man wanted on a Georgia arrest warrant tried to escape Alabama deputies by diving into Weiss Lake and swimming to the far shore, according to authorities. Eric Virta was found more than an hour later hiding in a swampy stretch near Mud Creek and Kirk's Grove, and he now faces new charges in Alabama on top of the felony allegations already pending against him back in Georgia.
The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office said deputies were called to a campground in the Wildwood Cove area off County Road 182 on Tuesday to serve the warrant, according to Atlanta News First. Rather than surrender, deputies said Virta jumped into the lake as they searched for him, forcing a chase that stretched from the campground shoreline all the way across the water. He reportedly swam to the other side of Weiss Lake in the area of Kirk's Grove and Mud Creek before deputies eventually tracked him down in a swampy pocket of terrain and took him into custody.
The pursuit tapped into the county's existing waterborne law enforcement capability. The Cherokee County Sheriff's Office has run a dedicated Lake Patrol Unit on Weiss Lake since 2009, using a specialized vessel originally repurposed from military surplus for water safety and aquatic enforcement work. That infrastructure meshed with a broader multi-agency response once Virta hit the water, according to WVTM/Rocket City Now, which reported that the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's Marine Patrol deployed a vessel to ferry Virta and arresting deputies back across the reservoir, with ground support from the Leesburg and Cedar Bluff Police Departments.
A Lake Built for Fishing, Not Fleeing
Weiss Lake is a 30,200-acre hydroelectric reservoir that Alabama Power created in 1961, stretching across 447 miles of shoreline that spans Cherokee County, Alabama, and reaches into northwest Georgia. Known regionally as the Crappie Capital of the World, the lake is fed by the Coosa, Chattooga, and Little Rivers and anchors much of Cherokee County's outdoor tourism economy, with 37 private marinas and numerous public campgrounds dotting its banks. The scale of the reservoir underscores just how far Virta reportedly swam in his attempt to put water, and distance, between himself and the deputies pursuing him.
The Mud Creek area where he was ultimately found has become familiar ground for local deputies. The same swampy terrain was the site of a July 2025 arrest of an out-of-state fugitive from Pennsylvania, according to WEIS Radio, suggesting the dense brush and creek bottoms around Kirk's Grove have repeatedly offered cover to people trying to disappear from police in the area.
Charges Stack Up on Both Sides of the State Line
Once in custody, Virta was booked into the Cherokee County Detention Center in Centre, Alabama, under Booking #9344 on local charges of being a fugitive from justice and attempting to elude a police officer, per jail records from the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office. Those Alabama charges come on top of the underlying warrant issued by the Floyd County Sheriff's Office in Georgia, which accuses him of violating probation, making terroristic threats and acts, and facing two separate firearms charges. WEIS Radio's reporting specifies those gun allegations as possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.
This is not the first time Virta has drawn a large law enforcement response in the region. He was previously the subject of a multi-agency search in Floyd County, Georgia, in December 2022 after a domestic altercation involving a rifle on Brewer Road, an incident that prompted Floyd County Schools to increase campus security districtwide, according to WSB-TV. Virta lives in Cartersville, in Bartow County, roughly 50 to 60 miles east of Weiss Lake and Cherokee County, Alabama, connected to the area via the US-411 regional corridor, as reported by FOX 5 Atlanta.
What Happens Next
Because Virta was arrested in Alabama on an out-of-state Georgia warrant, he cannot simply be handed over to Floyd County authorities without going through formal legal channels. Under federal law and interstate rendition principles, fugitives held on out-of-state felony warrants must either go through judicial extradition proceedings or sign a voluntary waiver before they can be legally transferred back to the state where the charges originated, per the Legal Information Institute. It remains unclear whether Virta will contest that process, what additional charges the firearms allegations might ultimately bring, or how long he had been staying in the Weiss Lake campground community before deputies caught up with him.
