Four men escaped from the Tanjipahoa Parish Jail in Louisiana this weekend due to an eight-inch gap in the prison and a lack of supervision, authorities said. Two of the men were still on the run as of Monday night, while the other two were found hiding in a trash can, police said.
Jimmy Travis, director of operations for the Tangipahoa County Sheriff's Office, blamed structural problems and a lack of oversight by jail staff at a press conference Monday.
According to a Facebook statement from Tanjipahoa County Sheriff Daniel Edwards, the four men eluded corrections officers while recreationally engaging in a yard shoot and hid until dark before fleeing.
Travis said the men escaped in pairs. The first two, Avery Guidry, 19, and Travon Johnson, 21, evaded corrections officers on Saturday by escaping through a narrow, eight-inch gap under the wall, then scaled two fences to leave the prison after dark. On Sunday, two other inmates, Omarion Hookfin, 19, and Jamarcus Cyprian, 20, also escaped by the same route.
Authorities were unaware the men had escaped until a family member of one of the men called on Sunday to say the men had sought refuge at a relative's house, Travis said. He attributed the delay to a lack of manpower and oversight.
“If the right number of people had been surveyed, we would have known right away,” he said.
The weekend prison understaffing issue is not unique to the state, which has the most overcrowded prison system in the country: In 2022, Louisiana corrections officials told lawmakers that state prisons and juvenile detention centers were understaffed due to low wages and poor conditions.
The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.
Guidry and Johnson were found by authorities in a trash can and were back in jail since Monday, Travis said. Hookfin and Cyprian remain at large, authorities said.
Johnson, Hookfin and Guidry were arrested and jailed in connection to the murders in 2022. Cyprian was jailed on armed robbery and weapons charges, according to the sheriff's office.
Travis said the barbed wire in the yard had become weakened by corrosion and was able to be broken down to create a small gap through which prisoners could pass and then climb down the wall, creating an additional gap of about eight inches.
“Eight inches doesn't seem like a lot, but a 150-pound person can get under it,” Travis said.
He added that he believes all four inmates used the same route to leave the prison.
“The fencing was flawed,” Travis told reporters. “There was another flaw that needed to be fixed.” He added that there wasn't enough barbed wire. He also suggested that the officers had not all been properly trained.
“Sometimes in our work we get complacent until something like this happens,” Travis said, but then he added: “This is a failure. There was a failure on our part.”
