Miss. officials search for 2 who escaped from troubled prison

Mississippi authorities were searching for two prisoners believed to have escaped Saturday from one of several prisons rocked by violence that has left at least five inmates dead in the past week.

Gov. Phil Bryant on Saturday said via Twitter that he has directed “the use of all necessary assets and personnel” to find the two inmates who escaped from the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

The state Department of Public Safety has deployed state troopers and the highway patrol’s special operations group to help the Department of Corrections find the two inmates and to help restore order at the troubled facility from which they escaped, Bryant said.

The Corrections Department said in a Facebook posting that David May, 42, and Dillion Williams, 27, were discovered missing from Parchman during an “emergency count“about 1:45 a.m. May is serving a life sentence for two aggravated assault convictions in Harrison County, and Williams is serving a 40-year sentence for residential burglary and aggravated assault in Marshall County.

The department said via Twitter on Saturday afternoon that there were no major disturbances occurring at Parchman.

“There was a minor fire at Unit 30 earlier this week. That fire, set by an inmate, was immediately extinguished. Like other facilities in the prison system, the prison has limited movement,” the department tweeted.

Five inmates have died in prison violence since Sunday; three of those deaths have occurred at Parchman. The prison is a series of cell blocks scattered across thousands of acres of farmland in Mississippi’s Delta region. Inmates who escape their cells sometimes don’t make it off the property.

Mississippi’s outgoing prisons chief said Friday that four of the five killings of inmates since Sunday stem from gang violence, as guards struggle to maintain control of restive inmates.

Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall said the department won’t confirm the names of the gangs “for security purposes,” but relatives of inmates who spoke to the Associated Press and other news outlets said there’s an ongoing confrontation between the Vice Lords and Black Gangster Disciples.

All state prisons statewide remained locked down Saturday, Bryant said, with inmates confined to cells, and no visitors allowed.