Authorities in Louisiana are intensifying their search for the last of three inmates who staged a dramatic escape from the St. Landry Parish Jail using tied bed sheets and a crumbling jail wall. The breakout has drawn national attention and echoes a troubling pattern of security failures in the state’s detention facilities.
The final fugitive, 24-year-old Keith Eli, remains at large. Eli was being held on a second-degree murder charge. The escape occurred in Opelousas, a city of around 15,000 located 130 miles northwest of New Orleans.
According to investigators, the inmates first removed deteriorating concrete blocks from a wall within the facility. Then, in a scene fit for a movie, they used tied bedsheets to scale the wall and descend from the jail’s roof. Eli has now been on the run for three days.
“We would prefer that he surrender himself peaceably,” said St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby J. Guidroz. “But we will not rest until he is captured.”
The other two inmates have been accounted for. Johnathan Jevon Joseph, 24, who was jailed on charges including rape, was arrested Friday after a brief chase. He had been hiding in a residence before fleeing to a storage shed, where he ultimately surrendered.
Joseph Allen Harrington, 26, was located Thursday at a home. After a standoff and repeated police calls to surrender, Harrington took his own life with a hunting rifle. He had been awaiting trial for multiple felony charges, including home invasion.
The escape comes just months after another high-profile incident in New Orleans, where ten inmates escaped through a hole behind a toilet. That group left behind a note mocking jail security: “To [sic] Easy Lol.” It took five months to capture all ten escapees.
The repeated security breaches have prompted renewed calls for reform in Louisiana’s jail system.
