Hospital ambush caught on video
Meade, another man suspected of two murders while on run
Security video captured most of an ambush at an Idaho hospital that left three corrections officers with gunshot wounds and allowed a white supremacist prison gang member to escape, a police detective testified Monday.
The testimony from Matthew Canfield, a violent crimes detective with the Boise Police Department, came during a preliminary hearing for Skylar Meade, the inmate charged with escaping from a hospital last month when an accomplice opened fire on guards who had been transporting him back to prison.
Nicholas Umphenour, who police say did the shooting, and Tia Garcia, who is accused of having provided the car the pair used to escape, had their preliminary hearings set for April 29.
Prosecutors did not play the surveillance video in court but submitted it as an exhibit. Magistrate Judge
Abraham Wingrove found that there was enough evidence to send the case against Meade to district court. His arraignment was set for April 17.
Video clips show three Department of Correction officers escorting Meade to the prison transport van from the emergency department when they “are approached by another individual who appears to point an object at them and shoot and fire rounds at them,” Canfield said.
The video also shows Meade and the shooter running to a parked vehicle, which they used to flee, Canfield said.
Part of the encounter is blocked by the prison transport van itself, Canfield said.
Investigators have also obtained video from a private ambulance that was parked in the emergency bay during the escape.
The attack on the corrections officers came just after 2 a.m. on March 20 in the ambulance bay of Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical
Center. Meade was brought to the hospital earlier in the night because he injured himself, officials said, but he refused treatment upon arrival.
Two corrections officers were wounded in the attack and a third was shot by responding police officers who mistook him for the gunman. All are expected to recover.
Meade and Umphenour are each being held on $2 million bail. Authorities said they are also suspected of killing two men during their 36 hours on the run — one in Clearwater County and one in Nez Perce County, both about a seven-hour drive north of where they were arrested in Twin Falls, Idaho. No charges have been filed in the deaths.
The victims have been identified as James L. Mauney, 83, of Juliaetta, Idaho, who was reported missing when he failed to return from walking his dogs, and Gerald Don Henderson, 72, who was found dead outside his remote cabin near Orofino, Idaho.