Two of the 10 inmates whoescapedfromNew Orleans’sjail on 16 May remained on the run as of Tuesday, after three more of the group were re-arrested Monday, authorities said.
One of the men was arrested by local police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, about 80 miles north-west ofNew Orleans. Two others were arrested in Walker county, Texas, Louisiana state police said on the social media platform X.
Louisiana authorities named the latest inmates who were recaptured as Lenton Vanburen, Leo Tate and Jermaine Donald. Jail escapees Dkenan Dennis, Corey Boyd, Gary C Price, Kendell Myles and Robert Moody were previously taken into custody by authorities.
Antoine Massey and Derrick Groves remained at large Tuesday. At least 11 people have been arrested on allegations of helping the group of 10 inmates either before or after the breakout.
Authorities had been scouring the New Orleans area for the escapees after they audaciouslybroke outof the Orleans Justice Center (OJC). The men yanked open a faulty cell door inside a jail, squeezed through a hole behind a toilet, scaled a barbed-wire fence and fled into the coverage of darkness.
The inmates’ absence wasn’t discovered until a headcount hours later, after they bolted for freedom. Graffiti left on the wall included the message “To Easy LoL,” with an arrow pointing to the gap.
City and state officials have pointed to multiple security lapses in the jail. Among those arrested on allegations of aiding the escapees was a jail maintenance worker accused of turning off the water to the toilet, an act authorities said helped the men get out. The worker said one of those incarcerated at the jail had threatened to stab him if he refused.
Many of the men were originally in the OJC awaiting sentences or trials for alleged violent crimes including murder.
Groves’s escape in particular has drawn attention. He has been convicted of a double murder as well as pleaded guilty to two other killings.
In an unrelated case that occurred about three years before he was born, Groves’s grandmother, Kim Groves, was slain after filing a brutality complaint against a New Orleans police officer – before the cop then hired a hitman to shoot her to death in 1994 in what one of the city’s most notorious murders.
The New Orleans jailbreak wasn’t the only one to make national news headlines recently. On Sunday, Grant Hardin – a former Gateway, Arkansas, police chief who is serving decades-long sentences for murder and rape – escaped from prison after disguising himself in “a makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement”, authoritiessaid.
Officials’ search for Hardin was entering its third day on Tuesday.
The Associated Press contributed reporting