Teen felons found 100 miles from facility

Whitmire ‘not impressed’ with TJJD, wonders how 16-year-old inmates could scale fence

A pair of teenage felons were captured in Montgomery County on Sunday evening, less than 24 hours after breaking out of an understaffed juvenile prison near Bastrop.

Brice Ryan Karalis and Bryan Ernando Villanueva — both 16year-olds from the Houston area — slipped out of their dorm at the Giddings State School around 9 p.m. Saturday and stole an unlocked car, officials said.

It wasn’t clear they had made it outside the “no climb” fence of the Lee County facility until a Texas Juvenile Justice Department staffer spotted two youths fitting their description in a park just before 11 p.m. that night.

“I’m not shocked,” said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who has long been critical of the state’s scandal-plagued juvenile justice system.

“I’m not impressed — in case you haven’t picked up on it — by the operation of the campuses, particularly Giddings,” Whitmire said. “We got two kids — how in the hell did they get over the razor wire?”

The teens — one of whom has a history of violence — ran out of their housing unit at the facility just over 100 miles northwest of Houston.

A guard saw them leaving but quickly lost sight of them in the dark on the sprawling prison grounds. The guard couldn’t leave his post to pursue the boys but alerted security, and a search started immediately.

“There is evidence to believe they scaled the fence,” said TJJD spokesman Seth Christensen, adding that their escape somehow never triggered the fence alarm. Giddings staff alerted the Lee County Sheriff ’s office by 10 p.m., and a reverse 911 call went out to local residents by midnight, informing them of the escape.

The teens allegedly stole an unlocked vehicle from an oil company in Giddings after the owner left the keys inside, Whitmire said. They headed toward home, driving over 100 miles before they were captured around 7 p.m. Sunday in Montgomery County after a civilian who’d seen the boys’ photos on social media spotted them in a park, according to officials.

“I’m glad that they weren’t hurt when they were captured, but I’m really, really glad they didn’t hurt the public,” Whitmire said.

One of the teens was already serving a 15-year sentence for armed robbery, according to Whitmire, who added that the boys likely will face new charges in light of the escape.

The Department of Public Safety, Lee County Sheriff ’s Department, Giddings Police Department and TJJD’s Office of Inspector General all pitched in to find the teen fugitives.

There hasn’t been an escape from Giddings in at least 10 years, Christensen said. But Whitmire pointed to the latest escape as proof of the inherent problems in relying on a lock-up model that includes decades-old facilities on sprawling campuses.

“As we have two escapees that are very dangerous to the community of Giddings and the surrounding areas, we’ve got to be very realistic about we’ve got to redesign where these youth are kept,” he said before the teens were found.

Instead, the Houston Democrat advocated for moving kids closer to home, in smaller, tightly controlled — and better staffed — facilities. Currently, Giddings has a 15 percent vacancy rate for corrections officers.

“We’re down to less than 1,000 kids in five campuses, so that’s good news,” he said. “But the bad news is that the ones that are still there are very tough and dangerous, and no one to this point in state government has faced the reality that you cannot confine that tough of a profile young person in a 200-acre open campus with multiple buildings and a shortage of corrections officers without terrible results.”

Addressing some of the ongoing problems at the agency will be Whitmire’s “highest priority” in the next legislative session, he said.

The past year has been a trying time for the troubled juvenile justice agency. TJJD saw a string of officer arrests in 2017, when a number of staffers were accused of having or trying to have sex with youths in their care.

In the months that followed, the state’s juvenile justice system weathered a number of high-level shake-ups, including the appointment of a new executive director, the ousting of the longtime independent ombudsman and the replacement of the board chair.

In February, the Texas Department of Public Safety announced the arrest of four current and former juvenile justice employees accused of tampering with records and using excessive force in handling jailed teens. Weeks later, a leaked email revealed more departures and restructuring.

Citing the ill-fated weekend escape, Whitmire said he’d requested a full security review of the Giddings facility.