Prison Escapes

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    Congo Releases More Than 700 Inmates After a Deadly Stampede

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    At least 129 people died when inmates tried to escape from Makala Prison, where conditions are abysmal and overcrowding is a major problem.More than 700 inmates were released from the largest prison in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s authorities said on Saturday, as officials sought to ease overcrowding in a facility where at least 129 people died in an attempted jailbreak this month.Congo’s justice minister, Constant Mutamba, announced their release during a visit to the Makala Central Prison, where the deadly episode highlighted the alarming conditions faced by inmates in the only prison in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and one of Africa’s most populous cities.Mr. Mutamba promised that Kinshasa would get a new prison, though he did not give details.Of the 729 inmates released, most — 648 — were released on bail.On the evening of Sept. 2, inmates, whose cells had been without water and electricity for more than a day and a half, tried to break out to escape the stifling heat, several inmates told The New York Times.The details remain unclear, but most of the deaths occurred in a stampede that followed, while at least 24 people were fatally shot while trying to escape, the country’s authorities have said. Several female prisoners were raped, according to Human Rights Watch and Congo’s interior minister.The Makala Prison, which was built in 1957 during the era of Belgian colonial rule and little renovated since, has a capacity of 1,500, but has at times held 10 times more than that.Military reinforcements at the entrance of Makala Prison after an attempted jailbreak this month.Hardy Bope/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe prison’s director, Joseph Yusufu Maliki, has been suspended, and dozens of inmates accused of raping female inmates during the jailbreak soon faced trial.Some of the women told the television channel TV5 Monde that 10 men, some of whom were armed with scissors and knives, had raped them and threatened to kill or mutilate them if they resisted.Human rights organizations and journalists have long described conditions in Makala and other prisons in the Central African country as inhumane: overcrowded, violent and filthy.Last year, more than 500 inmates died from suffocation and various diseases at the prison, according to Emmanuel Adu Cole, a human-rights activist based in Kinshasa. Mr. Cole said that out of about 15,000 inmates, only 2,500 had been convicted; the rest were awaiting trial.“Most of the inmates have no reason to be held in such inhumane conditions,” Mr. Cole said in a telephone interview. “This cannot continue.”More than 500 inmates had been released from the Makala Prison in August, before the attempted jailbreak shed a new light on the conditions there.“There is a program, across the country, that aims at building new prisons,” Patrick Muyaya, a government spokesman, said this month on the television channel France 24. “The incident that happened is going to accelerate the process that had already started.”Mr. Muyaya did not provide details on how many facilities would be built, nor when they would be operational. More

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      Inmate Captured in North Carolina After Escape

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      Law enforcement officers captured Ramone Alston, who had been serving a life sentence for murder, at a hotel. He was moved to a high-security prison unit and will face new charges.Authorities in North Carolina on Friday captured a man convicted of murder, whose escape from custody three days earlier had prompted an extensive search, according to the state’s Department of Adult Correction.The man, Ramone Alston, fled from a prison vehicle on Tuesday morning while being transported to a medical appointment at the U.N.C. Hospitals Hillsborough Campus.He was caught at a hotel in the city of Kannapolis just before 2 a.m. local time, in an operation that included local law enforcement officers and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Adult Correction said in a statement on Friday. Nobody was injured during the operation, it added.Mr. Alston, 30, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, will face charges of felony escape from prison, the statement said, and will be taken to a high-security unit in the state prison system to serve out that sentence while waiting to face the new charges in court. A woman, Jacobia Crisp, whom the release described as an acquaintance of Mr. Alston, was charged with felony aiding and abetting a fugitive.Authorities will investigate Mr. Alston’s movements while on the run, including whether he committed other crimes and if he had any other accomplices, the department said. Mr. Alston escaped early Tuesday when officers opened the door of the vehicle at the medical facility. Mr. Alston, who had managed to free himself from his leg restraints, ran out of the vehicle while wearing handcuffs and fled into the woods, state officials said.More than 300 law enforcement personnel from 19 agencies joined a search for him, scouring 1,335 acres.The police who had accompanied Mr. Alston were carrying weapons but did not fire at him because “it all happened so quickly,” a spokesman for the department said.Mr. Alston was convicted of first-degree murder in 2018 for his involvement in a shooting that led to the death of a 1-year-old girl on Christmas Day in 2015, according to court documents. Lawyers for Mr. Alston said he was not the person who had fired the shot that resulted in the girl’s death.Mr. Alston had been serving his sentence at Bertie Correctional Institution in Windsor, N.C., which is more than 100 miles east of the Hillsborough medical campus. More

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      Two Inmates Remain at Large in Louisiana Jail Escape

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      Two of the escapees were back in jail after being found in a dumpster, while the others remained at large, officials said.Four men were able to escape from Tangipahoa Parish Jail in Louisiana this weekend because of an eight-inch gap and a lack of oversight at the facility, the authorities said. Two of the men were still at large as of Monday night, while the other two had been found hiding in a dumpster, the police said.Jimmy Travis, the chief of operations for the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s office, blamed structural issues and a lack of oversight by the jail staff in a news conference on Monday.The four men escaped after they evaded correction officers during recreation time in the yard and hid out until darkness, according to a Facebook statement from the Tangipahoa Parish sheriff, Daniel Edwards.The men escaped in pairs, Mr. Travis said. The first two — Avery Guidry, 19, and Travon Johnson, 21 — left the jail on Saturday by evading correctional officers and escaping through a narrow, eight-inch gap under a wall before scaling two fences after dark. On Sunday, two other inmates — Omarion Hookfin, 19, and Jamarcus Cyprian, 20 — copied that route for their escape.The authorities were not aware that the men had escaped until a family member of one of the escapees called them on Sunday, saying that the men had tried to seek refuge at a relative’s house, Mr. Travis said. He attributed the delayed realization to understaffing and a lack of oversight.“If proper head counts had been conducted we would have known about it immediately,” he said.The staffing issues at the jail over the weekend are not unique for the state, which has one of the most overcrowded prison systems in the country. In 2022, Louisiana corrections officials told lawmakers that state prisons and juvenile detention facilities were understaffed because of low wages and poor conditions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      American Couple Goes Missing While Sailing Off Grenada

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      Kathy Brandel and Ralph Hendry were on their yacht in the Caribbean. The authorities are looking into whether their disappearance is connected to a prisoner escape.An American couple who had departed from Virginia and were spending the winter cruising in the Caribbean went missing this month while sailing off Grenada, and their boat turned up empty in neighboring St. Vincent and the Grenadines.Their disappearance came around the same time three men escaped from a prison in Grenada and made their getaway by boat to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the authorities in those islands said.In a statement, the Royal Grenada Police Force did not identify the two Americans but said that it was looking into possible harm to them in connection to the prisoners’ escape.According to the Salty Dawg Sailing Association, a nonprofit that brings together sailing and cruising enthusiasts, a skipper notified it on Feb. 21 that a member’s yacht called Simplicity was found anchored and abandoned off a beach on the southern coast of St. Vincent.The skipper boarded the catamaran and noted that its owners were not onboard, the association’s statement said. The skipper contacted the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Coast Guard, which then notified the local police.The missing boat owners were identified as Ralph Hendry, 66, and Kathy Brandel, 71, by the association and Ms. Brandel’s son, Nick Buro, who said the couple, originally from Virginia, were married for 27 years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Arkansas Authorities Capture Second Escaped Inmate

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      Jatonia Bryant, 23, had been held at a jail in Pine Bluff, Ark., on a capital murder charge before he and another inmate fled last week, the authorities said. The other escapee was caught Thursday.The authorities in Arkansas on Monday captured a capital murder suspect who had escaped from a local jail with another inmate, ending a weeklong manhunt.Officers conducting surveillance in Pine Bluff, Ark., just after 11 a.m. saw the suspect, Jatonia Bryant, 23, walking down a street wearing clothes that matched a description that had been provided to the law enforcement authorities and arrested him “without incident,” the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.Mr. Bryant, who is charged with capital murder in the shooting death of a man last year, and Noah Roush, 22, were discovered missing on Jan. 22 from the W.C. “Dub” Brassell Adult Detention Center in Pine Bluff, roughly 40 miles southeast of Little Rock, after a daring escape that involved bursting through holes they had made in the facility’s ceiling and roof, according to the sheriff’s office.On Thursday, officers caught Mr. Roush near an abandoned home in Pine Bluff where he had reportedly been seen. Mr. Roush had been held at the jail on burglary and theft charges.Mr. Bryant had remained at large, though the authorities expressed confidence last week that he was hiding out somewhere in the city of nearly 40,000 people.Escape charges were pending against both men on Monday, the authorities said.“Our investigators will continue to work bringing criminal charges against all the people who assisted Roush and Bryant in evading apprehension,” read the sheriff’s news release.Jatonia Bryant following his arrest on Monday morning in Pine Bluff, Ark.Captain Yohance Brunson/Jefferson County Sheriff’s OfficeThe authorities also revealed on Monday that Mr. Bryant and Mr. Roush had fled about 36 hours before jail staff members noticed that they were gone because they had earlier failed to take an accurate head count.The Jefferson County sheriff, Lafayette Woods Jr., also suggested that flaws in the design and structure of the jail had allowed the pair to break free, saying that the episode would serve as a “catalyst for further capital improvements” to the jail.Last week, Maj. John Bean, a sheriff’s office spokesman, said that surveillance footage showed the two men had worked together to make a hole in the ceiling above a shower stall and escape.Sheriff Woods added that the facility, which opened in 2007 with 310 beds to alleviate overcrowded jails in the county, faced staffing shortages and was down to 20 guards from a previous high of 48. More