Failed escape
By John Joyce
Published in News on February 3, 2015 1:46 PM
Full Size
News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Four inmates were caught trying to tunnel out of the Wayne County Detention Center Sunday.
Four inmates caught trying to escape Sunday afternoon from the Wayne County Detention Center are now in "segregated confinement" after jail personnel foiled their plans.
The attempted escape was first noticed at about 1:30 p.m., the Sheriff's Office said.
"Due to the diligence of our detention staff, at no point in time was there a cause for concern to the community," Capt. Robert Thaxton said. "They jumped right on it; they took care of it; and it was over. It was just that quick."
The inmates attempted to tunnel through an interior wall on the second floor. But had they succeeded, they still would have had to get through the exterior wall to come out on North William Street.
Two of the four inmates are awaiting trial on murder charges.
Derejay Williams Speede, 18, charged with first-degree murder by the Greene County Sheriff's Office, has been held in the Wayne County Jail since April 2014 on several local charges including robbery with a dangerous weapon and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.
He was already in the Wayne County Detention Center when Greene County officials charged him with a murder in their county.
Karcellius Sutton, 21, of Kinston, has been jailed since December 2013 and is charged with attempted first-degree murder.
Joseph Decore Simms, 25, of Goldsboro, jailed since April 2014, is charged with robbery, kidnapping and possession of stolen goods.
Joseph Wilson Hasty, 22, of Goldsboro, is charged with numerous felony counts of breaking and entering motor vehicles.
Hasty only arrived at the jail Friday.
Each of the four men now faces new charges of felony escape and have each been given a new bond of $5,000 secured based on the new charges.
Thaxton said Hasty was not being housed with the other three men, but was confined to the same area during his in-processing.
"He was on a classification lockdown. That particular floor on that side is a lockdown side of the jail," he explained.
When new inmates are first brought into the jail, they are put on "classification lockdown" for 14 days before being assigned permanent housing.
"That is due to the fact we actually investigate things such as, have they been here before; are there certain inmates with whom they can't be housed; are they escape risks? We classify them during that time, and then we place them somewhere else," Thaxton said.
The other three men were on that side of the jail due to disciplinary infractions.
Officials suspect the escape plan was already in place when Hasty arrived, but just when the work began, they cannot say.
"I don't think they had been at it a real long time. Basically they had just gotten through the mortar around the block, which is what they were working on, not actually the block itself," Thaxton said.
The Sheriff's Office is not releasing other details of the escape attempt, Thaxton added.
"You can start banging on a wall anywhere in this jail, and we'll hear it, but there is no way you can tell which part or which floor it is coming from," he said.
Once officers heard banging on the walls Sunday, they began to investigate.
In less than an hour, they found the source of the banging.
"They used a piece of metal to try to bust their way out through a cinder brick wall. They tore up part of the jail to get the metal," he said.
Only the second-floor was ever locked down. A total lockdown of the facility was not called for, Thaxton said.
"Not based on that instance -- it was minute. We just put that particular floor on a lockdown until we removed the four. And then later on we went back to normal operations at the detention facility."
A similar instance took place several years ago, with a handful of inmates trying to break out through the walls.
That time, much like this most recent escape, the public was never in any danger, Maj. Tom Effler said.
He, too, congratulated the detention center staff and credited the training the officer's receive.
"Our procedures worked just like they are supposed to," he said.
Wayne County Sheriff Larry Pierce said he could not be more pleased with how his staff reacted. But he did address a concern of his own with a stern message to the public included in the press release issued about the escape Monday.
"I want everyone to be very clear that if we do catch anyone -- a visitor, an inmate or any other person -- no matter what capacity they be in, attempting to assist anyone in the detention center in an escape attempt or trying to smuggle in any type of contraband, they will be charged. The diligence of the officers that discovered this attempt and stopped it is very much commended," Pierce said.