A maintenance worker has been arrested and charged with helping 10 inmates carry out a brazen escape from a New Orleans jail last week.
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. Mr Williams told investigators an inmate had threatened to “shank him” if he did not shut off the water, according to an affidavit supporting his arrest.
The inmates then used an unidentified tool to cut steel bars behind the cell room sink, leaving behind a hole in the wall just big enough to crawl through.
The inmates left the jail through a loading dock; scaled a wall, using blankets to protect themselves from barbed wire; 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.
Mr Williams told agents from the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation that an inmate, Antoine Massey, “threatened to shank him if he did not turn the water off”. Instead of reporting the threat, Mr Williams told agents he turned off the water.
With no water running, the inmates were able to remove the sink and toilet fixture from the wall, investigators said.
Officials did not notice the inmates were missing until a routine headcount at 8.30am on Friday, roughly seven hours after they had escaped, sheriff Susan Hutson of Orleans Parish said.
Four have since been captured, and a search is continuing for the remaining six, including Massey (32), who had been jailed on charges of domestic abuse involving battery by strangulation, theft of a motor vehicle and a parole violation. Other escapees, who ranged from age 19 to 42, were being held on charges including murder, attempted murder, armed robbery and carrying illegal weapons.
Mr Williams has been charged with one count of malfeasance in office and 10 counts of being a principal to the escape. At his first appearance in court Tuesday, he was ordered held in lieu of $1.1 million bond.
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
