A manhunt is continuing for four prisoners, including one transgender sex offender, who escaped from a Missouri county jail on Tuesday.
Five prisoners originally escaped, but one has been captured, authorities said Friday. All five escapees were being held on felony charges. Three still on the run are sex offenders, the St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department posted on Facebook.
The captured prisoner, Michael Wilkins, was not a sex offender. He was apprehended without incident and is being held without bond, police said.
Inmates Kelly McSean (also known as Larry Bemboom), Dakota Pace, Aaron Sebastian, LuJuan Tucker and Wilkins used vents and pipes in the building’s plumbing system to reach the roof, St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Gregory Armstrong said, according to NBC.
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Cameras in the jail that might have alerted guards to the escape were not operating at the time due to construction, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“We have a very secure facility; this was human error — that’s what happened,” Sheriff Daniel Bullock of the St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department said, according to KTVI-TV.
The escape from the county jail took place at about 10 p.m. Tuesday after inmates forced their way through a door that should have been secure.
“They went through a cell that should have been off limits, found a piece of metal in there to pry the door open with, and come up on the roof,” Bullock said.
“Chain of events was actual quite a coincidence; doing work on the building, a ladder was left to the roof on the outside of the building. They went and stole a car close to the facility here, about 15 minutes they were driving out of the county. We don’t believe in coincidence all the time, but it seems like a chain-of-events stars lined up for these guys.”
Five Missouri inmates were caught on video getting into a stolen Toyota Scion minutes after breaking out of a county jail Tuesday night.https://t.co/2141QUnNKU
— NBC Los Angeles (@NBCLA) January 19, 2023
“When they went to do the check to count prisoners, that’s when they found out they were gone. They had already been gone for a couple of hours.”
Although a surveillance camera outside of the jail caught the inmates stealing a car, Bullock said the vehicle cannot be traced.
“Car was sitting there with temporary plates on it, so we could not track it,” he said, according to KTVI. Full of gas, credit cards in the car, I mean there were all these things, these guys were luck.”
The sheriff’s department Facebook statement said the men drove off in a southerly direction in a gray 2009 Scion TC with Missouri temporary tags on it.
The department said Tucker, Sebastian and McSean were being held at the Missouri Department of Corrections Sexual Offender Treatment Center. Pace and Wilkins were being held on felony warrants.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch summarized their criminal records.
?#BREAKING: 5 Missouri Inmates Escape From Jail Through Plumbing Pipes
?#Farmington | #Missouri pic.twitter.com/myEl9bWnU9
— Bver (@HeyBver) January 20, 2023
Tucker, 37, had been convicted on a second-degree assault charge and was being held at the St. Francois jail on a charge of third-degree assault while at the state treatment facility as well as second-degree sodomy and damaging state property. His initial conviction in 2003 was for rape of a 12-year-old girl.
McSean, 52, the transgender inmate, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 39-year-old woman in 2003 and pleaded guilty to several charges of assault in 2014. He also is charged with assaulting an employee at the sexual offender treatment facility.
Sebastian, 30, pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted statutory sodomy of a 7-year-old girl in 2012. He faces charges of first-degree statutory sodomy concerning alleged victims who were 8 years old and 9 years old, as well as a charge of knowingly committing violence upon an employee of the treatment center.
Pace, 26, faces 16 felony counts of receiving stolen property, one count of forgery and one count of identity theft. Other charges pending against him include forgery, tampering with a motor vehicle and second-degree assault.
Wilkins, 41, faces a charge of second-degree burglary and violating probation. He has a record that includes convictions for felony motor vehicle theft and tampering with a motor vehicle.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
