Inmates give the slip, thanks to peanut butter
Street: Money Never Sleeps. A dozen inmates escaped from an Alabama jail not by cutting through steel bars, drilling through walls, or ripping off a toilet from a wall. They used peanut butter. Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood told reporters yesterday that the inmates used peanut butter to make the number of a door leading outside look like the number of one of the internal cell doors.
They then asked an unsuspecting jail guard, who was in the control room keeping count of inmates through a camera, to open the door. He did, thinking he was letting the inmates back into their cell.
But unbeknownst to the guard, he had inadvertently unlocked the door that opens to the outside.
“That may sound crazy, but these people are crazy like a fox,” Underwood said.
Underwood said the inmates’ plan was “well laid out,” and they took advantage of an inexperienced employee.
“This is one time we slipped up. I’m not going to make excuses. It was a human error that caused this to happen . . . He’s a young guy, hadn’t been here that long,” Underwood said of the jail guard whom he did not name.
The 12 inmates then used blankets to cover and climb over a razor-wire fence that surrounds the Walker County Jail in Jasper, Alabama, northwest of Birmingham. Several of them rode in one truck, while the others ran in different directions, Underwood said.
Eleven have since been recaptured and are now in custody. One, Brady Andrew Kilpatrick, who was in jail on drug possession charges, remains at large.
The inmates are between the ages of 18 and 30. Two are in jail on attempted murder charges. The others are charged with crimes such as burglary, theft, drug charges, domestic violence, breaking and entering, and disorderly conduct.
Underwood said the inmates will face additional escape charges. Others who helped them will also be charged.