Just after midnight Friday, a corrections monitoring technician in New Orleans stepped away for food. When he left, the Orleans Justice Center had been in lockdown since 10:30 p.m., as it usually was, with inmates expected to be in their cells for the night.
But in the technician’s absence, several inmates began tampering with the door of Cell Delta 1006. They tugged and pulled until it broke open, and snuck into the handicap cell. Then, a man squeezed through a small hole in the wall behind a metal toilet.
Another followed. And another. Seven more would make their way through the tiny opening as 10 inmates fled from the New Orleans jail and into the warm, muggy night. They left a message on the wall on the way out.
“To Easy LoL,” it read.
The men, the youngest 19 years old and the oldest 42, face a wide array of charges including murder, aggravated assault with a firearm and domestic abuse battery. They had prepared for their escape, and possibly had help, officials said.
Toiletries left behind had been used to remove the toilet and sink, as well as bolts in the cell. At least one steel bar protecting plumbing fixtures appeared to have been intentionally cut using a tool, according to law enforcement.
Around 1 a.m., nearly 40 minutes after their escape began, they left the jail through a loading door where supplies were brought in, sprinting and leaping off the dock to freedom in a blur of gray, beige and orange. One wore a blue hat. Two others had orange shoes. One man tripped over a bundle of fabric he was carrying before getting up and running out of the camera’s range.
The group scaled a fence along Interstate 10, using blankets they brought to shield themselves from the barbed wire, law enforcement later said. The inmates dashed across train tracks and multiple lanes of traffic, on their way to a nearby neighborhood where they shed their jail jumpsuits.
During a routine head count at 8:30 a.m., officials finally discovered that multiple inmates had escaped. The missing inmates — at first reported to be 11 men before it was later corrected to 10 — triggered a widespread manhunt across Louisiana and seven nearby states: Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
Their escape also unleashed several suspensions, questions about lack of transparency and a flurry of accusations about who’s to blame.
As authorities at the jail activated “emergency protocols,” the city of New Orleans spent the morning of May 16 unaware that 10 armed and dangerous men had escaped.
The public wasn’t notified until nearly 11 a.m. — almost 10 hours after the inmates had fled and three hours after the sheriff learned they were missing, according to CNN affiliate WDSU. A citywide alert wouldn’t be sent until 2:30 p.m.
Down the road from the Orleans Justice Center, the staff at the district attorney’s office was unaware of the situation unfolding at the jail.
Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams said he walked into the office Friday morning not knowing people his office had convicted were on the run. Williams himself had prosecuted Derrick Groves, one of the escapees who had been convicted of murdering two men.
“The people in my office put people in jail. These inmates don’t like them,” Williams told WDSU. “The fact that (these inmates) are less than 100 feet away and they’ve gotten out…and no one rings an alarm? That’s deeply problematic.” He added that two of his employees have left town because they were worried for their safety.
Williams said his office was notified around 11 a.m., and immediately began calling witnesses. Some of the escaped men, he said, were “known to have threatened witnesses in order to evade prosecution.”
Around 11:13 a.m., he called Deputy US Marshal Brian Fair and Capt. Rodney Hyatt with Troop NOLA for help — and said neither had received contact from the sheriff’s office. He said it was “a very dangerous situation,” made “more dangerous because of the poor leadership and lack of transparency.”
The sheriff’s office said it notified the US Marshals, the Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Division of Probation and Parole by 9:30 a.m. The New Orleans Police Department was alerted immediately after that, Sheriff Susan Hutson said.
Hutson called it a “fluid situation” as authorities worked to get a handle on 1,400 people in the Orleans Justice Center.
“When this went down, our first concern is to find out who these folks are, confirm, and then we’ve got to lock down the whole jail and … make sure nobody else is missing,” Hutson said. “We are investigating our own to find out exactly what happened and where those lapses were.”
Not alerting the public and press immediately, Williams argued, has only helped the inmates escape.
“The first priority in any escape must be the immediate capture of the inmates and coordination with state and local law enforcement — but that effort cannot come at the expense of timely notification to the public, which is also critical to keeping communities safe,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said.
The first inmate captured, Kendell Myles, was arrested at 11:22 a.m., shortly after the public and district attorney had been notified. Myles had been hiding under a car at a hotel parking garage, law enforcement said.
‘Somebody’s got to be held accountable’
The finger-pointing from state and local officials began almost instantaneously.
Four supervisors and 36 staff members were working at the time of the escape, the sheriff’s office said. Three jail employees have been suspended without pay pending the outcome of an internal investigation as of Friday evening. It’s unclear why they were subject to disciplinary action.
Williams called the escape “a complete failure of the most basic responsibilities entrusted to a sheriff or jail administrator.” Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office Maj. Silas Phipps Jr. said the department was “underfunded, understaffed, underpaid.” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said, “This is what happens when George Soros funds New Orleans elections.”
Murrill, the state attorney general, said, “Someone clearly dropped the ball and there’s no excuse for this.”
Other officials blamed the escape on defective locks on the doors and cells.
Chief of Corrections Jay Mallett blamed the security breach on the facility’s infrastructure. A third of the security cameras in the facility are currently inoperable, including three cameras in the unit from which the escape occurred, according to the sheriff’s office.
“We’ve identified that we have a large number of high-security individuals in a minimum custody facility,” Mallett told CNN Friday.
At a Friday news conference, Hutson, who is running for reelection, said the escape was “coordinated,” but hinted there was “more than meets the eye in the investigation.”
“Why did it happen just right now, right in the middle, as we’re getting ready to start this sheriff’s race? This is very suspicious,” Hutson said.
Two more men — Dkenan Dennis and Robert Moody — had been arrested as of Friday evening. Dennis was previously charged with armed robbery with a firearm, and Moody had previously been charged with aggravated second-degree battery, among others.
Louisiana State Police announced Saturday the reward for tips leading to the capture of the seven remaining inmates has been increased.
Charles Ramsey, a CNN security analyst and a career law enforcement professional who served as the chief of police in both Philadelphia and Washington, DC, said what happened was “unacceptable.”
“This whole thing stinks,” Ramsey said. “I know that they’re on the defense right now, but they should be on the defense. There’s just no way that something like this should happen.”
CNN’s Isabel Rosales contributed to this report.
