Man sentenced for faking death to avoid sex abuse charges

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) – A man has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for faking his death in Alabama to avoid criminal charges of impregnating a teenage girl in his home state of Mississippi.

Jacob Blair Scott was sentenced Monday. A federal judge in Alabama set the sentence to run at the same time as Scott’s 85-year Mississippi prison sentence.

In June, a Mississippi jury convicted him of sexual battery and child abuse charges. Scott’s accuser testified Scott sexually assaulted her in 2016 and 2017.

Scott was facing charges when he rowed a boat into the Gulf of Mexico off an Alabama coast in 2018, leaving a gun and a suicide note.

He was captured in Oklahoma in 2020, living under another person’s name.