TOPEKA – Kansas officials were relieved Friday to have a convicted murderer back behind bars two days after he and three other inmates escaped from a county jail, but authorities were still looking for the fourth.
The other inmate Eric James, 22, is also now in custody. He was convicted of aggravated robbery, burglary, kidnapping and criminal damage to property for crimes occurring in three southeast Kansas counties over 10 days in February 2008.
It was at approximately 5:30 p-m, Friday that James, was apprehended and taken into custody in Omaha, Nebraska. The 2002 Nissan Altima he was suspected of being in was also recovered.
He and the other three inmates escaped Wednesday morning from the Ottawa County Jail in Minneapolis, about 120 miles west of Topeka, where they had been transferred because of overcrowding at the state prison in Ellsworth. The sheriff said they used homemade knives to overpower two guards, get into the jail’s control room and open doors.
Two of the escaped inmates were caught Wednesday. Convicted murderer and escapee Santos Carrera-Morales, 22, was arrested late Thursday in Russell, Kan., about 80 miles from the jail, the Kansas Department of Corrections said in a statement.
The escape prompted the Department of Corrections to remove the remaining 18 inmates back to the prison at Ellsworth. Department spokesman Jeremy Barclay told The Associated Press that the three recaptured men are now segregated from fellow inmates and each other at the Ellsworth prison.
“We’re very pleased to have three of the four back where they belong, behind bars,” Barclay said. “We’re pursuing all possible leads.”
Carrera-Morales was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of a teenager and a young man in Sedgwick County in March 2007. Police in Wichita – where Carrera-Morales has ties – have described him as a gang member.
Russell Police Chief Jon Quinday said two officers took Carrera-Morales into custody after a 911 caller alerted police to a suspicious person at the 24/7 convenience store at a truck stop off
of Interstate 70. Quinday said Carrera-Morales told police he hitched a ride into the city.
“He was sitting on the side of the store,” Quinday said. “He had been given a ride there by somebody who picked him up north of the city.”
Quinday did not say if police have identified the person who Carrera-Morales said drove him to Russell.
Alberto Barraza-Lujan, 23, was the first inmate to be recaptured, done shortly after the escape. He was serving time for attempted aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer in 2011.
The second inmate, 21-year-old Drew Wade, turned himself in Wednesday evening at a Walmart in North Platte, Neb., about 240 miles northwest of the Ottawa County Jail. He had been serving time for robbery and aggravated battery.
On Thursday, Barclay told The Associated Press that the department was reviewing its policy on inmate transfers to Ottawa County – one of four county jails accommodating prisoners from
overcrowded state facilities – as “an interim step” while it investigates the escape.
As of Thursday, the department said it still housed 86 male inmates in county jails under contracts paying the counties an average of $40 a day per inmate. The state also has contracts with jails in Butler, Cowley and Leavenworth counties, Barclay said.
County lockups must pass an inspection that includes a review of training and facilities before it can accept state inmates. An Ottawa County website said its jail can house 60 offenders and has eight corrections officers on staff. It opened in 1996, making it the smallest and oldest of the county jails used by the state for overflow.
Statewide, there are 8,654 male inmates, a number that exceeds the bed space by 212, or 2.5 percent.