Ten inmates, who may have had help from jail workers, broke out of a New Orleans jail early Friday, escaping through that hole in a cell wall, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office said.
The inmates were then seen on surveillance video leaving through a door on a loading dock at the jail, scaling a wall and running across an interstate, Sheriff Susan Hutson said.
The Louisiana State Police said on Friday that one of the escapees, Kendell Myles, had been arrested in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
The Sheriff’s Office warned that the remaining escapees should be considered “armed and dangerous.”
“We have indications that these detainees received assistance from individuals inside of our department,” Sheriff Hutson said on Friday.
She added that supervisors and lower-level staff members were working when the inmates escaped from the jail, called the Orleans Parish Justice Center, at around 1 a.m.
Officials said they were investigating multiple security failures.
Although the jail was placed on lockdown at 10:30 p.m. the night before the escape, the inmates began tampering with a locked cell door at 12:23 a.m., ultimately breaking it open, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The office blamed “defective locks and doors” for the breach, and Sheriff Hutson said she had previously complained about the locks to a judge and to city officials.
Jeworski Mallett, chief of corrections at the Sheriff’s Office, said the inmates had escaped from a part of the jail where sliding doors can be forced off their tracks, allowing people to enter and exit at will.
The metal sink and toilet had been removed from a wall in a cell, and the bolts had been taken out, he said.
“We know that this could not be removed from the inside, so we are investigating that to see exactly who entered these areas, what kind of work was done, if there was work being done, and if this was an inside job,” he said.
Four supervisors and 36 staff members were working at the time, he said.
About a third of the security cameras in the jail are “currently inoperable,” the Sheriff’s Office said, including three cameras in the unit where the escape occurred.
Officials noticed during a routine head count at 8:30 a.m. on Friday that the detainees were missing, Sheriff Hutson said.
She said the office then activated “emergency protocols” and began a search for the inmates.
“We do acknowledge there is no way people can get out of this facility without there being some type of lapse in security,” Sheriff Hutson said.
“It’s almost impossible — not completely, but almost impossible — for anybody to get out of this facility without help from the outside.”
The Sheriff’s Office previously said 11 inmates had escaped but later corrected the number to 10.
It said it had mistakenly listed an inmate as an escapee who was actually still incarcerated.
The escape led to sharp criticism of the Sheriff’s Office from officials who questioned how 10 inmates had managed to escape and why the office had not immediately notified the public.
“Someone clearly dropped the ball, and there’s no excuse for this,” Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said in a statement on social media.
She called for an investigation to determine what had happened.
“This is beyond unacceptable, and once these offenders are back in custody, there must be real accountability,” she said.
Jason Williams, the Orleans Parish district attorney, said in an interview on WDSU, a local television station, that the escape was “an unprecedented failure.
” He expressed frustration that he, the public and the news media had not been notified immediately when the inmates escaped.
He raised the possibility of a grand jury investigation to examine who was involved.
He said his office had also contacted witnesses involved in the inmates’ cases to notify them that the men had escaped.
“I’ve got a deep fear right now for people who were brave enough to come forward to testify in these cases,” he said.
“This is a very dangerous situation that has only been made more dangerous because of the poor leadership and lack of transparency.”
Maj. Silas Phipps Jr., a leader of the investigative bureau of the Sheriff’s Office, said that officials were “working every angle” to find the inmates. Anyone who helped them, he said, will also be prosecuted.
The Sheriff’s Office pushed back against criticism that it had not promptly notified others of the escape.
It said that the United States Marshals, the Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Division of Probation and Parole were notified by 9:30 a.m., and that the New Orleans Police Department was alerted immediately after that.
Sheriff Hutson told the New Orleans City Council in October that the jail had about 1,500 inmates, well above the 1,250-inmate cap set by the Council and far more than the 900 inmates her staff could handle, NOLA.com reported last year.
While violent crime in New Orleans was down, Sheriff Hutson said in the article, there had been an influx of people charged solely with misdemeanors such as trespassing, shoplifting and simple assault.
“We still have to hold them,” she told the Council during its annual budget hearing, NOLA.com reported. “It stresses our facilities.”
(NYT/vitalnewsngr.com)
