A manhunt for the inmates who escaped from a New Orleans jail by fleeing through a hole behind a toilet entered its third day on Sunday, with at least a dozen law enforcement agencies searching for them.
Seven of the 10 men remained at large Sunday, a spokesperson for the Louisiana State Police confirmed in an emailed statement to the Associated Press. The agency was unable to provide details about the scope and target of the investigation for security reasons, the email said. The spokesperson added that a multiagency task force was scouring the region for the remaining fugitives.
In a separate statement, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said on Sunday her office’s “main priority remains recovering the prisoners, protecting the public, securing and stabilizing the facility staff, and building.”
New Orleans jail escape update
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry planned a 5 p.m. news conference with law enforcement agencies to provide an update on the search.
At least one of the escaped inmates was captured based on a tip from the public, according to a statement from the FBI on the social media platform X. The reward for information leading to the capture of inmates still at large has been increased to $5,000 from the ATF in addition to $2,000 from Crimestoppers and $5,000 from the FBI.
Who are the inmates that escaped?
The men range from 19 years old to 42, and face a variety of charges including aggravated assault, domestic abuse battery and murder. New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick warned that the fugitives are dangerous in a news conference on Friday night but also urged the public “not to panic.”
One of the men who is still at large was identified as Derrick Groves.
Groves, 27, was arrested for the shooting deaths of Jamar Robinson and Byron Jackson on Mardi Gras in 2018, CBS affiliate WWL-TV reported. At least two members of Robinson’s family told WWL-TV that they went into hiding following Groves’ escape.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen, we didn’t know how Derrick Groves felt … whether he was coming for us, we didn’t know,” one of the family members told the news station.
They also said the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office did not contact them at any point after the jailbreak.
The sheriff’s office on Friday identified Robert Moody as one of the escapees who had been recaptured following a tip to Crimestoppers.
Two others that were captured were 24-year-old Dkenan Dennis and 20-year-old Kendell Myles, authorities said. They were rebooked and charged with simple escape, according to the sheriff’s office.
How did the New Orleans inmate escape?
Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said the men were able to get out of the Orleans Justice Center because of “defective locks.” Hutson said she has continuously raised concerns about the locks to officials and, as recently as this week, advocated for money to fix the aged infrastructure.
Hutson said Friday that “there’s no way” for inmates to escape the facility “without help from the outside.”
The inmates were discovered missing during a routine head count conducted at 8:30 a.m. local time at the Orleans Parish Jail, according to the sheriff’s office. They are believed to have escaped sometime just after midnight.
The sheriff said that around 12:23 a.m., the inmates yanked the sliding jail cell door off the track and at 1:01 a.m., they exited the jail after breaching a wall behind a toilet.
Photos provided by authorities showed what they said were clean cuts on metal bars behind the toilet inside the jail cells.
The toilet and bolts were removed using toiletry items, the sheriff said, but didn’t specify what the items were. The inmates then scaled down a wall and ran across the interstate.
The Orleans County Sheriff’s Office on Friday night released security video of the extraordinary escape, which shows the inmates sprinting out of the prison and then traversing the freeway.
The escaped inmates also scrawled obscene messages for the guards. One, which was misspelled, read “to easy, LOL.”
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