Multiple Prisoners Escape Louisiana Jail Through a Wall, Leading to Massive Manhunt

Authorities in Louisiana are searching for an escaped inmate who remains on the run days after he and two others broke out of the St. Landry Parish Jail by removing concrete blocks from a wall.

Detectives and SWAT officers are still looking for 24-year-old Keith Eli, who escaped from the Opelousas facility — about 150 miles from New Orleans — on Wednesday, Dec. 3. Eli was being held on a second-degree murder charge.

“We will continue our efforts, without end, to apprehend Keith Eli. We would prefer that he surrender himself peaceably,” St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby J. Guidroz said, adding, “But we will not rest until he is captured.”

Eli fled alongside 24-year-old Johnathan Jevon Joseph and 26-year-old Joseph Allen Harrington. Harrington died by suicide with a hunting rifle on Thursday, Dec. 4, after officers found him at a residence and attempted to get him to come out using a loudspeaker, according to authorities. He had been facing several felony charges, including home invasion and burglary.

Joseph was tracked down on Friday, Dec. 5, after investigators received a tip and found him hiding in a storage shed. He was originally jailed on multiple charges, including rape and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Sheriff Guidroz said the trio managed to escape by removing blocks from a deteriorating section of the jail wall to create a hole, then using bedsheets to climb down and drop to the ground outside.

“An internal investigation has been initiated, the jail supervisory staff will be providing a comprehensive report, and both will be forwarded to my office for appropriate action,” Guidroz said in a statement.

This was not the first escape from the St. Landry Parish facility. Another inmate fled the same jail in October before being recaptured by the Opelousas Police Department, according to local outlet KADN.

Parish president Jessie Bellard has pushed back on the sheriff’s description of the jail’s condition.

“The claims about crumbling walls and rusted-out cell door locks are inaccurate. The Parish Jail does not have these structural issues, and I invite the Sheriff to produce documentation to substantiate his claims,” Bellard wrote in a Dec. 6 Facebook post.

The jailbreak comes months after a separate dramatic escape in Orleans Parish, where 10 inmates got out through a hole behind a toilet in May and left a taunting message on the wall: “To Easy LOL.”

Officials later alleged that Sterling Williams, a maintenance worker, helped facilitate that escape by shutting off the water to a toilet and sink in a cell. Inmates then ripped out the fixtures, cut through the connected pipes and slipped through the resulting hole in the wall.

Jail surveillance footage obtained by news outlets shows two inmates forcing open the door to the cell with the shut-off water. Inside, they can be seen cutting through the plumbing to remove the sink and toilet before escaping.

That incident ended on Oct. 8, when U.S. Marshals announced they had captured the last remaining escapee, Derrick Groves, at a residence in Atlanta. Deputy U.S. Marshal Brian Fair told CNN that a tip to Crimestoppers Greater New Orleans led investigators to the home, and it took nearly three hours — and multiple rounds of gas — to locate Groves hiding in a crawl space.