Ten Louisiana inmates escape by derailing jail cell doors and squeezing through bathroom wall in suspected inside job
One inmate has been captured since escape was discovered, according to state police
Local, state, and federal law enforcement are engaged in a massive manhunt across Louisiana after officials discovered Friday morning that 10 inmates had broken out of a New Orleans jail in a daring escape involving broken cell doors, a breached bathroom wall, and a climb over a jailhouse security barrier.
One man has since been recaptured.
Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson called the escapes from Orleans Justice Center a “very serious and unacceptable situation” and said during a Friday news conference that officials had launched a “full-scale search operation” to locate the missing men.
Officials are investigating the likely possibility that the men had some form of assistance in escaping and the plan was in part an inside job.
“It’s almost impossible, not completely, but almost impossible for anyone to get out of this facility without help from the outside,” Hutson said Friday afternoon in a separate press conference.
“We also have indications that these escapees received assistance from individuals inside the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office,” the sheriff’s office told The Independent in a statement.
Authorities, including the sheriff, learned shortly after a routine 8:30am headcount at the jail this morning that the men had escaped, more than seven hours after the men broke out.
Sheriff’s office officials later explained that the jail locks down after 10:30pm, but the men were able to break out just after midnight Friday morning by derailing the sliding doors to their cells.
Hutson said the escapes highlighted the need for more funding to fix jail infrastructure, including the sliding cell doors, an issue she said she’s raised in the past. The facility needs upwards of $5 million in upgrades, including to its cell doors, and the jail was only at about 60 percent staffing at the time of the breakout, she added.
The sheriff’s office told The Independent the men were able to escape due to “defective locks and doors,” and noted major facilities issues at the jail, including that approximately one-third of the security cameras throughout the facility are currently inoperable, including three cameras in the unit where the men escaped.
A surveillance technician was on duty at the time of the escape, but the men were nonetheless “able to breach a wall behind a toilet in their housing unit which was out of view,” the sheriff’s office told The Independent.
It is unlikely the men would’ve been able to get the toilet and bathroom fixtures off their mountings and escape through the wall behind using their strength alone, indicating tools were likely used, officials said.
After breaching the wall, the group then traveled to a loading dock where the jail receives supplies, scaled a security wall, and ran across Interstate 10 to freedom.
Officials said the men should be considered armed and dangerous, and warned members of the public not to approach any of the escapees.
Louisiana state troopers located one of the inmates, Kendell Myles, in the French Quarter of New Orleans on Friday morning.
“After a brief foot pursuit, he was apprehended on Royal Street,” the agency said on X.
Myles was hiding beneath a car in the Hotel Monteleone parking garage, according to the sheriff’s office.
Project NOLA facial identification cameras helped spot Myles, an official with the monitoring outfit told WDSU.
Video of the arrest, obtained by the outlet, shows a group of officers pushing Myles inside a state police SUV as a crowd looks on. A voice can be heard saying, “Get in the car.”
Myles previously escaped from a New Orleans-area detention center in 2022.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry celebrated the arrest.
“Thank you to Troop NOLA for their diligence and speed in apprehending the first escapee,” he wrote on X. “To the other 10: YOU ARE NEXT!”
The original 10 who escaped are Antoine Massey, Lenton Vanburen, Leo Tate, Kendell Myles, Derrick Groves, Jermaine Donald, Corey Boyd, Gary Price, Robert Moody, and Dkenan Dennis, according to the sheriff‘s office.
Police previously said an 11th man, Keith Lewis, was part of the group that escaped, but later discovered he had been moved to a different cell and was briefly unaccounted for but remained in custody and was not part of the breakout.
Among those who escaped, four had been charged with murder, while others face charges including aggravated assault with a firearm, armed robbery with a firearm, and armed false imprisonment, NBC News reports.
Groves was convicted last year on two charges of second-degree murder and two charges of attempted murder in connection with two 2018 deaths that took place on Mardi Gras Day, per WDSU.
Louisiana officials criticized the sheriff’s office for not notifying fellow law enforcement agencies and the public sooner.
“Someone clearly dropped the ball and there’s no excuse for this,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement on X.
“The first priority in any escape must be the immediate capture of the inmates and coordination with state and local law enforcement — but that effort cannot come at the expense of timely notification to the public, which is also critical to keeping communities safe,” she added.
New Orleans police chief Anna Kirkpatrick said on Friday during a press conference that her agency didn’t learn about the escapes until around 10:30am, two hours after it was discovered.
The sheriff’s office said the United States Marshals, Louisiana State Police, and state probation and parole officials were notified by 9:30am, and the New Orleans Police Department was alerted immediately afterward through a police fusion center.
Kirkpatrick said her officers were available to protect individuals like witnesses or victims with ties to the escaped men’s cases.
"If you are concerned, we can help you get to safe locations,” she said Friday. “We are being proactive on that already, and we've already removed a family."
The $145 million Orleans Justice Center opened in 2015 and is considered a relatively modern and state-of-the-art facility.
The previous sheriff, Marlin Gusman, dismissed claims that the jail was left in poor repair, accusing the current sheriff of playing “the blame game” in an interview with WDSU.
In 2023, monitors overseeing the jail as part of a larger federal consent decree in the city reported poor supervision, a spike in inmate violence, fatal overdoses, and the use of unnecessary force against detainees.