As police closed in on the last two men to escape from Cook County Jail, another of the fugitives surrendered to police outside a Cicero house early Monday.
Investigators also focused on whether a guard may have helped the six prisoners escape just before midnight Saturday–the second jailbreak in two days at the facility.
One of the jail guards who reportedly was overpowered by inmates in the chaotic jailbreak late Saturday gave investigators conflicting statements Sunday about whether he helped the band of at least seven prisoners, a law enforcement source said.
The plan may have included the escape of several other inmates who did not make it out of the cell tier, called the Special Incarceration Unit, the source said.
Late Sunday, authorities had a house surrounded in the 1300 block of South 59th Avenue in Cicero, and the remaining escapees were believed to be inside, Cicero town spokesman Dan Proft said. Authorities believed a woman who rents an apartment in the brick two-story house knows one of the escapees and was inside with them, Proft said.
About 12:03 a.m. Monday, Francisco Romero, 23, walked out of the house with two small children. Romero turned around with his hands on top of his head and was taken into custody by authorities. The children ran from the man into the arms of officers.
The remaining two fugitives were still inside the house with a woman and other children, Proft said.
Investigators are focusing on how six inmates managed to escape from the most secure tier of the jail, especially just one day after an inmate escaped from another jail division by hiding in a laundry truck and less than two weeks after inmates smuggled a loaded revolver into the jail.
One of the captured escapees gave investigators details of an elaborately planned scheme that included a girlfriend of one of the men waiting outside the jail with a getaway car, a law enforcement source said. The source did not know whether the girlfriend succeeded in ferrying escapees away from the jail complex, a sprawling campus that straddles California Avenue south of 26th Street.
The latest escape happened a few hours after Friday’s escapee, Warren Mathis, 35, was captured. On Sunday, Sheriff Michael Sheahan faced mushrooming questions about security at the jail.
“We have to find out why and what happened and what went down,” Sheahan said at an afternoon news conference. He acknowledged that the investigation includes the possible complicity of guards, saying he did not know whether that had happened.
Sheahan said jail protocols prohibit a single guard from handling an inmate alone in the Special Incarceration Unit, and yet that was the situation that sparked the jailbreak.
Shortly before midnight, inmate Patrell Doss, 25, who is awaiting trial in the murders of two South Side women, was taking a shower in the tier. As his shower was ending and the veteran guard on duty approached, Doss allegedly threw a cup of hot, soapy water in the guard’s face and brandished a homemade knife, according to authorities.
The inmate took the officer’s handcuffs and handcuffed him to a bar, authorities said. The inmate then walked to a control panel and electronically opened six cells, freeing inmates. The guard was not injured.
Sheahan, who said he was embarrassed and appeared agitated at the news conference, said a single officer should not have been guarding the shower. Sheahan also said there should have been more than one officer on the tier.
“One thing I’ve learned in my 16 years as sheriff: Never trust an inmate,” he said.
The first inmate took the officer’s uniform and put it on, authorities said, and another set a mattress on fire. The smoke attracted the attention of a second guard from another area of the jail. Looking through a locked door, he saw what he thought was a guard in uniform in the midst of the fire; that was actually the inmate in the guard’s uniform, authorities said.
When the second guard unlocked the door, he was overpowered by the seven inmates. They took keys from a desk and used them to unlock two doors that led them to small parking lot near the Cook County Criminal Courts Building.
Six of them scaled a barbed-wire fence onto 26th Street. Doss, the inmate who donned the guard’s uniform, became trapped between locked doors and was stopped by guards, a source said.
The six were wearing tan jail scrubs. Two were seen a short time after the escape on Sacramento Avenue near 24th Street.
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Two of them, still wearing inmate uniforms, were captured about six hours later by Oak Park police as they walked along a street that parallels railroad tracks. A third fugitive, Michael McIntosh, 30, of Chicago, was arrested Sunday night by Chicago police patrol and tactical officers at a house in the 10600 block of South Aberdeen Street, a source said. Guns were recovered from the home, the source said. McIntosh had been in jail on a charge of aggravated battery with a firearm. McIntosh was caught after the U.S. Marshal’s Great Lakes Regional Task Force received information on the Aberdeen address.
Romero, of Chicago, was convicted last month of the 2001 murder of a 12-year-old boy he shot in the head. He was awaiting sentencing and faces up to 60 years in prison, authorities said.
In addition to Romero, the two men still at large are Tyrone Everhart, 28, of Markham, charged with aggravated kidnapping and attempted escape from the Markham courthouse; and Eric Bernard, 22, of Chicago, charged with armed robbery.
Oak Park police captured David Earnest, 38, charged with murder; and Arnold Joyner, 43, of Chicago, charged with theft and attempted escape. In January, Joyner slipped away from guards inside the Cook County Criminal Courts building and tried to escape. A guard stopped him before he made it to the front doors.
Oak Park Police Chief Rick Tanksley said a dispatcher on Sunday spotted Earnest and Joyner wearing khaki clothing walking near South Boulevard and Ridgeland Avenue. The dispatcher notified nearby Officer Dawn Carver.
Carver said the men fled in opposite directions when she attempted to stop them. Carver pursued Joyner and arrested him without incident in a park on Lake Street just west of Ridgeland Avenue.
“He did not resist. Once I pulled up in the park, he basically just quit running,” Carver said.
Another Oak Park officer arrested Earnest on South Boulevard just west of Ridgeland.
Tanksley said one of the inmates indicated that the six men had been on a westbound Union Pacific train.
Police stopped the train and searched it but did not find any of the other four. The train resumed service Sunday morning.
The search for the fugitives was being led by the U.S. Marshal’s Great Lakes Regional Task Force, which includes deputized sheriff’s investigators. Chicago police also scrambled their Targeted Response Unit to saturate parts of the city looking for the fugitives and launched an air patrol by helicopter, spokeswoman Monique Bond said. Marvin Bernard, 33, said the police came to his cousin Eric Bernard’s former residence in the 3300 block of West Beach Avenue to see if the escapee had paid his family a visit.
But Bernard had not, although his cousin is hoping that he will surrender before he gets hurt.
“I am just praying to God that he turns himself in,” Bernard said. “He is in real bad trouble.”
Everhart’s father, Tyrone Everhart Sr., is a sheriff’s police captain at the jail. On Sunday, he told the Tribune that he previously told jail officials that his son should be considered a heightened escape risk. The elder Everhart said his son was transferred to a more secure wing because of his concerns.
“I warned them up front. I gave them letters to let them know up front that Tyrone is an escape risk,” he said.
Everhart was charged with trying to escape a penal institution in 2005 and was awaiting trial. McIntosh has been charged with attempted felony escape in November 2005.
David Earnest was recently charged with criminal damage to state property while in the Cook County Jail. Eric Bernard has been accused of violence in at least two incidents against peace officers, in 2003 and 2005.
Romero, in addition to being convicted of murder in January, pleaded guilty to possession of contraband in December. A source said the contraband was a homemade knife and marijuana.
The latest escape came a day after inmate Warren Mathis escaped Friday morning by hiding in a laundry truck.
And it was less than two weeks after another breach of security allowed a visitor to smuggle a revolver into her boyfriend..
Under fire for the accumulating troubles, Sheahan said, “I take full responsibility for the people who work for me.”
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