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| Prison Foils Escape Plot |
| By The Times Leader |
| Published: 10/17/2005 |
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Two inmates at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility staged a fight to distract corrections officers while they popped a screen off a fourth-story window and tried to escape, according to a prison official. The jail was in lockdown status all day Saturday as the failed escape attempt was investigated. The status forced inmates to stay in their cells and visitors were turned away. The two men who tried to break out of the jail are 21-year-olds from Hazleton who have been charged with committing four armed robberies together, said Sam Hyder, deputy warden at the jail. Their names are being withheld until a full investigation has been completed. Hyder said that at about 6:20 p.m. on Friday, corrections officers were alerted to a fight on the fourth floor, which is filled with people charged with armed robbery, aggravated assault and similar crimes. When a fight is reported, a “panic button” is pressed by corrections officers, calling any available officer to the fight, Hyder said. He said the fight was quickly broken up and corrections officers had “a bad feeling” that something strange was going on, so they immediately searched all of the fourth-floor cells and found the two men trying to escape. “I honestly believe the fight was staged to attract our attention,” Hyder said. Hyder said the men had popped out a steel screen in a fourth-floor cell. To escape, the men also would have had to get past the shatter-proof 2- by-3-foot glass window behind the screen. Hyder said the men could have been working to pry open the screen with a homemade instrument for a while. The instrument had not been found as of Saturday. He said one of the men said he was “trying to do what Hugo did,” referring to double-murder suspect Hugo Selenski, who escaped from the jail in October 2003 by breaking out of a seventh-floor window and using sheets that had been tied together to scale down the outside of the jail. Selenski awaits trial in a state prison. “To think Hugo Selenski is some kid's role model,” Hyder said. Hyder praised the jail's corrections officers for being alert. “We've had some deep concerns because it's been unusually quiet lately,” Hyder said. “This is not a mom and pop holding tank for DUI (offenders) anymore. Now, it's violent.” Hyder said the jail will be locked down until the instrument that was used to take off the screen is found. “I won't rest until I find it,” Hyder said. “That jail is going to be torn apart this weekend.” He said inmates sometimes make weapons with parts from mops, electrical equipment and other materials in the jail. He said some inmates have even brought weapons into the jail in their body cavities. Hyder said he expects the men to be charged. “This is serious,” he said. “This isn't going to be a slap on the hand.” |
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