According to District Attorney Jason Williams, two Orleans Parish attorneys who sent a recently escaped convict to prison have fled the state along with their families. Williams described feeling “personally afraid” as he was responsible for the second-degree murder case against Derrick Groves, who is one of the six men still at large.
For context, many conservatives have blasted Democrat run cities, like New Orleans, for their soft-on-crime polices and low standards. In response to this case, Gov. Jeff Landry (R-LA) criticized the city for its progressive policies, which may have contributed to the escape.
In any case, Willams deflected this criticism saying, “The lawyers who tried that case with me, the witnesses who were brave enough to come forward and stare Derrick Groves down in that courtroom, the next of kin, who sat in that courtroom knowing what he did to their family members — we’re all the ones in harm’s way, not Jeff Landry.”
Further deflecting blame, he said, “It’s not the DA’s office’s responsibility to go pick them up in a van and drive them up to (Louisiana State Penitentiary at) Angola,” after a conviction. ” He also described the governor’s remarks as “factually dishonest, incorrect and disingenuous,”
Speaking about the prison break, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson stated to local media. She explained, “There are deficiencies in these facilities that cause public safety concerns, and I need to confirm that Kendall Miles is in custody. He’s being rebooked for simple escape as well. OPSO deputies found him hiding beneath the car and at the hotel Mont Leon parking garage, and he was transported to OJC by the Louisiana State Police.”
Clearing up common misconceptions about he incident, she said, “We also need to acknowledge that Keith Lewis was previously reported as an escape detainee. He was in a different cell, so he had been moved, but it had not been updated. So he is not on the run. There were 10, not 11, and he is in our facility. And did not, did not try to escape. The remaining individuals are being actively pursued, and our deputies, in collaboration with LOPD.”
Describing the conditions that allowed the dangerous men to escape, she stated, “They were able to break out around 12:23 am. They were able to break Open a door. There was a corrections monitoring technician in the pod module to be watching that they were still able to exit the jail about 1:01 am after breaching a wall behind a toilet in the jail. Based on video surveillance, they were seeing exiting a door on the docks where we normally bring in supplies, scaling a wall, and running across the interstate.”
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Continuing her remarks, she said, “Shortly thereafter, we have indication that these detainees received assistance in their escape from individuals inside of our department, and the escape was discovered during a routine head count at 8:30 am this morning the We do acknowledge there is no way people can get out of this facility without there being some type of lapse in security.”
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Concluding her remarks, the LOPD official said that this was a rare occurrence. Hutson declared, “There’s no way it’s almost impossible, not completely but almost impossible, for anybody to get out of this facility without help from the outside. We intend to find out exactly what happened. And state law enforcement are working tirelessly to locate and return them to custody.”