A Mississippi manhunt is underway for two of four escaped convicts still on the run after the group made a cunning jailbreak on Monday and two were later recaptured.
The pair caught are the youngest of the escapees and were apprehended in flight several miles from the Raymond Detention Center near Jackson, police say.
But their more mature cohorts remain on the lam and sheriff’s deputies, aided by U.S. marshals, are concentrating all their resources on lassoing the two fugitives ASAP.
Still at large this morning is Montreal Anderson, 25, and his 23-year-old criminal companion, John Rollins.
Both prisoners are African American and believed to be traveling on foot together.
The foursome’s plot for freedom bears some similarities to the epic New York State escape last month in that “they have had some help from the inside and outside,” asserts the local sheriff.
As with Richard Matt and David Sweat’s prison break from Clinton Correctional in rural upstate NY, the four Mississippi prisoners also pulled off a ruse involving bed checks, quietly fleeing from their cells at approximately one in the morning.
In separate confrontations with the posse pursuing them, Matt was ultimately shot dead and Sweat taken alive, although the latter required hospitalization after being seriously wounded in gunfire.
Two Clinton prison employees have so far been arrested for aiding the NY inmates, but a major corruption probe has been launched at the prison which has broadened a list of additional suspects and resulted in firings as well.
Doubtless, once convicts Anderson and Rollins are finally bagged, the Mississippi jail break will have the same impact.
"This investigation continues and we will get to the bottom of it," County Sheriff Tyrone Lewis has publicly vowed. "We won't stop until it is done," he said.
