NEW ORLEANS: Ten men broke out of a New Orleans jail Friday in an audacious overnight escape by fleeing through a hole behind a toilet and scaling a wall while the lone guard assigned to their cell pod was away getting food, authorities said.
\nNine of the escapees, which include suspects charged with murder, remain on the lam following the breakout that the local sheriff says may have been aided by members within the department.
\nSurveillance footage, shared with media during a press conference, showed the escapees sprinting out of the facility \u2014 some wearing orange clothing and others in white. They proceeded to scale a fence, using blankets to avoid being cut by barbed wire. Some could be seen sprinting across the nearby interstate.
\nA photograph obtained by The Associated Press from law enforcement shows the opening behind a toilet in a cell that the men escaped through. Above the hole are scrawled messages that include \u201cTo Easy LoL\u201d with an arrow pointing at the gap.
\nThe absence of the 10 men, who also utilized facility deficiencies that officials have long complained about in their escape, went unnoticed for hours. It was not until a routine morning headcount, more than seven hours after the men fled the facility, that law enforcement learned of the escape.
\nOfficials from the sheriff\u2019s office say there was no deputy physically at the pod, where the fugitives had been held. They said there was a technician, a civilian who was there to observe the pod, but she had \u201cstepped away to grab food.\u201d
\nSoon after the escape, one of the men, Kendall Myles, 20, was apprehended after a brief foot chase through the French Quarter. He had previously escaped twice from juvenile detention centers.
\nSheriff blames \u2018defective locks\u2019 and possibly inside help
\nOrleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said the men were able to get out of the Orleans Justice Center because of \u201cdefective locks.\u201d Hutson said she has continuously raised concerns about the locks to officials and, as recently as this week, advocated for money to fix the ailing infrastructure.
\nHutson said there are indications that people inside her department helped the fugitives escape.
\n\u201cWe do acknowledge there is no way people can get out of this facility without there being some type of lapse in security,\u201d Hutson said of the jail, where she says 1,400 people are being held. \u201cIt\u2019s almost impossible, not completely, but almost impossible for anybody to get out of this facility without help.\u201d
\nThe escapees yanked open a door to enter the cell with the hole in it around 1 a.m.
\nThey shed their jail uniforms once out of the facility, and it is still unclear how some of them obtained regular clothing so quickly, officials said.
\nAuthorities did not notice the men were missing until 8:30 a.m. Authorities initially said 11 had escaped, but at a Friday afternoon news conference said one man thought to have escaped was in a different cell.
\nThree employees have been placed on suspension pending the outcome of the investigation. It was not immediately clear whether any of the employees were suspected of helping with the escape.
\nWho are the fugitives?
\nThe escapees range from 19 years old to 42. Most of the men are in their 20s.
\nOne of the fugitives, Derrick Groves, was convicted on two charges of second-degree murder and two charges of attempted second-degree murder last year for his role in the 2018 Mardi Gras Day shootings of two men. He also faces a charge of battery against a correctional facility employee, court records show. Law enforcement warned that he may attempt to locate witnesses in the murder trial.
\nAnother escapee, Corey Boyd, had pled not guilty to a pending second-degree murder charge.
\nHutson said the police department is actively working with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to search for the fugitives.
\nOfficials use facial recognition to find one fugitive
\nPolice relied on facial recognition technology to identify and capture one fugitive, said Bryan LaGarde, executive director of Project NOLA, a nonprofit operating more than 5,000 cameras around New Orleans. His organization, which partners with Louisiana authorities, received the list of escapees and entered their images into the system \u2014 finding two within the French Quarter in minutes.
\n\u201cWhen we saw them, they were wearing street clothes. They were walking openly in the street. They were keeping their heads down and checking over their shoulder.\u201d LaGarde said, adding that the other fugitive walked out of sight of the cameras.
\nLouisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill called the escape \u201cbeyond unacceptable\u201d and said local authorities had waited too long to inform the public.
\nShe said she has reached out to surrounding states to alert them about the escape. Murrill said the fugitives have had \u201cample\u201d time to escape to \u201cfrankly anywhere across the country.\u201d
\nNew Orleans Police Department Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said her agency has put \u201ca full court effort\u201d to respond to the escape and are working with the FBI and US marshals.
\nOfficers were focused on identifying and providing protection for people who may have testified in their cases or may be in danger. One family has been \u201cremoved\u201d from their home, Kirkpatrick said.
\n\u201cIf there is anyone helping or harboring these escapees, you will be charged,\u201d Kirkpatrick added.
\nTurmoil at New Orleans\u2019 jail
\nNew Orleans\u2019 jail has for more than a decade been subject to federal monitoring and a consent decree intended to improve conditions.
\nSecurity problems and violence persisted even after the city opened the Orleans Justice Center in 2015, replacing the decaying Orleans Parish Prison, which had seen its own string of escapes and dozens of in-custody deaths.
\nA federal judge declared in 2013 that the lockup had festered into an unconstitutional setting for people incarcerated there.
\nOrleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson said staff is \u201cstretched thin\u201d at the facility, which is around 60 percent staffed.
\nThe jail contained numerous \u201chigh security\u201d people convicted of violent offenses who required a \u201crestrictive housing environment that did not exist,\u201d said Jay Mallett, Orleans Parish Sheriff\u2019s Office chief of Corrections. The sheriff\u2019s office was in the process of transferring dozens to more secure locations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW ORLEANS: Ten men broke out of a New Orleans jail Friday in an audacious overnight escape by fleeing through a hole behind a toilet and scaling a wall while the lone guard assigned to their cell pod was away getting food, authorities said. Nine of the escapees, which include suspects charged with murder, remain …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":81163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81169,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81154\/revisions\/81169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}