ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – The search has ended for a convicted child sex offender who walked away from Mercy South Hospital early Thursday morning.

Tommy Wayne Boyd was taken back into custody just before 8 p.m. Thursday in the Dierbergs parking lot on Old Route 66 (Watson Road) in Shrewsbury.

Boyd, 45, was serving a 30-year sentence at the Potosi Correctional Center for statutory sodomy. He’d been taken to Mercy South for an undisclosed treatment. Boyd walked out of the main entrance at the hospital shortly before 4 a.m.

Authorities said Boyd was in the custody of two state corrections officers when he escaped. There was no physical confrontation when Boyd escaped, and no one was hurt.

According to Missouri court records, Boyd has convictions in two cases, initially investigated in 1996 and 2007.

A jury convicted him of enticement of a child in November 2007, and he was sentenced to 30 years in prison over that charge. Court records linked both of his cases to Greene County, Missouri, in the Springfield metropolitan area.