Fla. Inmate's Crafty Scheme to Escape from Jail Fails

Article Tools Print This Page | Comments(0) | Suggest a Story

By Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: 03/17/2003

His handmade clothing would be crude, and his ride would be waiting outside.
Ronald C. Naval, 33, used a spring from a ballpoint pen to sew pants out of a bed sheet. He colored his black shoes white with toothpaste and drew a Nike swoosh on a plain white T-shirt.
Authorities say Naval, an inmate in the Charlotte County jail since November, planned to don the attire during visitation time, jimmy the lock of a visitor room and break a window with hair clippers.
Then, quite simply, he would slip out the front door -- just another visitor who came and went.
'Frankly, he had nothing to lose,' Maj. John Davenport, jail commander, said March 5. 'One more charge to him really didn't mean anything.'
The escape never happened.
Naval was charged at the jail March 4 with attempted escape after investigators learned of his elaborate scheme.
The Jacksonville native already faced life in prison for charges in Charlotte, Polk and other counties.
On February 27, an inmate tipped off a corrections officer to a possible escape. Officials searched bunks and found contraband stuffed inside Naval's mattress. Items included a soap dish lid and a pair of pants made from a bed sheet.
Naval, who was already wearing his toothpaste-covered shoes, had planned to make his escape that night, according to the tipster.
'He was collecting things that were available in the pod through normal everyday operation,' said Davenport, adding that officers perform random searches and always find some contraband. 'It's not that hard to hide things.'
Later that day detectives found more contraband, on the top shelf of the mop closet. An envelope there contained a homemade visitor's pass, a spring from a ballpoint pen and a necklace made from a Monopoly piece and a piece of a sheet, evidently part of Naval's attempt to look like a jail visitor.
Then investigators turned to Naval's earlier phone calls, which led them to a man who detailed what Naval planned to do with the contraband.
The man, a former inmate, told detectives Naval sent him two letters describing his escape scheme.
Naval planned to jimmy the lock of a visiting room door with a makeshift key made from the soap dish lid, break the glass partition with hair clippers, crawl to the visitor side and hide. Then, dressed in his makeshift clothes, he would walk out the front door amid other visitors.
Naval asked the former inmate to be the getaway driver, reports said.
'Inmates have 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to just think about things. This was a very ingenious way; he just wasn't going to get away with it,' Davenport said. 'The way he had planned to do it, there was no way.'

Comments:

No comments have been posted for this article.

Login to let us know what you think

MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search