Agents of the law in Mississippi and surrounding states continue searching for three escaped fugitives. A fourth prisoner has already been accounted for. All the rest are considered armed and dangerous after their escape from a Hinds County jail.
Fugitives on the loose
As of Wednesday, April 26, three of four fugitives who escaped from the Raymond Detention Center in Hinds County, Mississippi, are still on the loose. 22-year-old Dylan Arrington barricaded himself in a house, shot a deputy in the leg, then burned the house to the ground around him.
One of the remaining three has been spotted in Texas. Police have no idea if the other two are with him or whether they split up. To be on the safe side, they’re considering all the possibilities.
Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones gave a press conference on Tuesday where he noted that they “had been made aware of a killing and carjacking that occurred Monday evening in south Jackson.”
#BREAKINGNEWS: Leake County Sheriff Randy Atkinson said a Hinds County escapee was believed to be barricaded inside a burning home. https://t.co/Y0wZch6bzr
— WJTV 12 News (@WJTV) April 26, 2023
They believe Arrington was responsible for that. He’s been “accused of killing Pastor Anthony Watts, 61, of Simpson County. Watts was a pastor at a D’Lo church.” Before that, he had stolen a motorcycle and wrecked it. He may have killed someone to get that, too. Reports aren’t clear. At least one of the other three fugitives headed for Texas.
Sheriff Jones has confirmed that “surveillance video showed Jerry Raynes at a service station on Sunday, April 23 at 11:00 a.m.” in Spring Valley, Texas.
It also showed the stolen Hinds County maintenance truck they were searching for. They recovered the truck but none of the fugitives. “It’s still unconfirmed if Raynes traveled to Texas alone.”
County has problems
Sheriff Jones admits that the county has a big problem with the way it runs their jail. These aren’t the first fugitives they’ve had to round up and escapes aren’t the only big problems. “We have once again been compromised. We are accountable for this,” he acknowledged.
Jones explained that sometime Saturday night, “the inmates breached one of the cells and the roof.” They may have trickled out one at a time, or just waited for the right opportunity, because there was evidence they had been “camping out” on the roof. He found out about the escape Sunday morning.
Nobody noticed they had an escape until a head count came up short. That lead to “a lockdown of the detention center.” Jones admits that his office “was short detention officers and that the jail was near capacity. It’s no secret. We are still facing challenges regarding our detention center.”
Update: Surveillance footage of escapee, Jerry Raynes, in a service station in Spring Valley, TX on Sunday morning at 11am. The stolen Hinds County maintenance truck was also recovered in Spring Valley, TX on Sunday. It is still unconfirmed if Raynes traveled to Texas alone. pic.twitter.com/yFZjH7G0yj
— TyreeJonesSheriff (@TyreeSheriff) April 26, 2023
Even without fugitives running around killing people, the “jail was already under federal scrutiny for alleged mismanagement.” Last July, “a federal judge ordered a rare takeover of the jail after he said deficiencies in supervision and staffing led to ‘a stunning array of assaults, as well as deaths.‘”
The local news outlets are screaming that fugitives can stroll right out of the jail. WAPT is furious that “the Raymond Detention Center has experienced problems with inmates escaping in recent years due to the lack of manpower.”
Right now they’re running about 50 detention officers short. The sheriff knows “that’s no excuse. Again, we have accepted accountability regarding what happened. We just want the other people to know the responsibilities that we are faced with.“
