A maintenance worker has been arrested and charged with helping 10 inmates carry out a brazen escape from a New Orleans jail last week, bolstering the suspicion among investigators that the escape would have been impossible without inside help.
The worker, Sterling Williams, 33, who was arrested on Monday, shut off water at the jail, allowing the inmates to remove a metal toilet and sink fixture from a cell wall, the Louisiana attorney general’s office said. The inmates then cut a hole in the wall just big enough to crawl through and left behind a taunting misspelled message: “to easy LOL.”
The inmates left the jail through a loading dock, scaled a wall and ran across Interstate 10. A civilian employee of the sheriff’s office, who was the only person monitoring security systems in the part of the jail where the escape occurred, had left his station at the time to get food, officials said last week.
Mr. Williams “admitted to agents that one of the escapees advised him to turn the water off in the cell where the inmates escaped from,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement. “Instead of reporting the inmate, Williams turned the water off as directed, allowing the inmates to carry out their scheme to successfully escape.”
Officials did not notice that the detainees were missing until a routine head count at 8:30 a.m. on Friday, roughly seven hours after they had escaped, Sheriff Susan Hutson of Orleans Parish said last week. She said the office then activated “emergency protocols” and began a search for the inmates.
Four have since been captured, and a manhunt is continuing for the remaining six.
Mr. Williams has been charged with one count of malfeasance in office and 10 counts of principle to simple escape. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer. He was scheduled to make his first appearance in court on Tuesday afternoon.
Officials said last week that they believed the inmates must have had help from jail workers. “It’s almost impossible — not completely, but almost impossible — for anybody to get out of this facility without help,” Sheriff Hutson said at a news conference on Friday.
Liz Murrill, the Louisiana attorney general, said in a statement that the investigation into the escape was continuing.
“We will uncover all the facts eventually and anyone who aided and abetted will be prosecuted to the full extent the law allows,” she said. “I encourage anyone who knows anything and even those who may have provided assistance to come forward now to obtain the best possible outcome in their particular case.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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