Three of the 10 inmates that escaped a New Orleans Parish jail on Friday morning (May 16) have now been captured.
According to the New York Times, the men were able to break out after ripping a comby unit and cutting a rectangular hole through the wall. The Orleans Parish Sheriffs Department believe that the 10-man group may have escaped with the help of jail workers. A surveillance video also showed the men fleeing from a loading dock before scaling a wall and running towards the interstate.
The men didn't leave without scribbling some messages on the cell wall, some reading "[Too] easy" and "We innocent." The escape began with door tampering roughly two hours after the jail was placed on lockdown around 10:30 p.m.
Officials noticed that the 10 men were gone during a headcount at 8:30 a.m. on Friday morning. While a third of the cameras in the facility are "currently inoperable," the only employee who was monitoring security systems where the escape occurred left his station to grab a meal.
By Saturday (May 17), three men had been captured: Kendell Myles, 20, Robert Moody, 21, and Dkenan Dennis. The seven remaining men are to be considered "armed and dangerous."
"We have indications that these detainees received assistance in their escape from individuals inside of our department," Sheriff Hutson said in a press conference on Friday. Three Sheriff's Office employees have been suspended without pay as a result of the breakout.
Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, has since acknowledged on social media that "someone clearly dropped the ball" in the "beyond unacceptable" incident.