4th person charged in ambush that helped Idaho prison inmate escape

A fourth person has been charged in connection with an ambush that allowed a white supremacist Idaho prison gang member to escape as he was being discharged from a Boise hospital.

Tia J. Garcia, 27, of Twin Falls, owned the car that inmate Skylar Meade and his accomplice, Nicholas Umphenour, fled in after Umphenour shot and wounded two corrections officers who were preparing to bring Meade back to prison early March 20, Shawn Kelley, of the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, told a judge Thursday.

She falsely reported the car stolen less than an hour after the ambush, Kelley said, and text messages from the day before showed Umphenour had instructed her to do so.

Police tracked Meade and Umphenour down about 36 hours after their escape, but the pair is also suspected in the killings of two men while they were on the run. They have not been charged in the killings.

Garcia is an acquaintance of Umphenour and Meade, Kelley said, and she picked up Umphenour from the airport when he arrived in Boise on March 17. It’s not clear where Umphenour had traveled from. Umphenour and Garcia were seen in surveillance video from several places around Boise that day.

Garcia lives with her sister and is unemployed, according to a public defender who represented her during an initial court appearance Thursday. Her criminal record includes six felonies and four misdemeanors, including battery and drug charges as well as fleeing and eluding.

She is being held on $1 million bail on a charge of aiding and abetting escape. She did not enter a plea. The Ada County public defender’s office, which represents Meade, Umphenour and Garcia, declined to comment Thursday.