Six D.C. Jail guards have been placed on leave as authorities investigate the possibility that the daring escape of two prisoners was an inside job.
An inquiry is under way into how inmates Joseph Leaks and Ricardo Jones broke out of the D.C. Jail over the weekend.
Leaks, 32, and Jones, 25, who were awaiting trial in connection with a deadly shooting last summer, broke a window in the warden’s office, scampered down a canopy and walked through a security gate at the jail. They were wearing blue jumpsuits, which are only supposed to be given to inmates upon their release.
“I think they got some assistance from within,” said D.C. Council Member Phil Mendelson, D-at large.
At a news conference Monday, jail director Devon Brown said Saturday’s escape was “a major breakdown.”
Leaks was on a work detail, painting walls on the administrative side of the jail, when he escaped. But Jones was supposed to be back in his cell block, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Beverly Young said.
Other key questions remain unanswered. How did they get their hands on the jumpsuits? Why was an accused murderer assigned to a work detail outside his cell block?
“We’re doing a very aggressive investigation,” Young said.
Neither man had a history of discipline problems before the escape, Young added.
All six of the relieved guards have been interviewed by internal affairs investigators, Young said.
Mendelson, who chairs the council’s Judiciary Committee, spoke with Brown on Monday and said that Brown shares his fears.
Leaks was arrested early Sunday in an Alexandria hotel. Jones was arrested after a brief foot chase in Prince George’s County late Sunday.
But officials aren’t willing to call it a happy ending.
“It’s very, very troubling,” Mendelson said over the weekend. He also promised to hold hearings on the escape.
Brown was brought in from New Jersey because he had a reputation for cleaning blighted corrections systems. But this year has seen a string of embarrassments for D.C.’s jailers.
In January, an inmate died after he slipped out of line and clung to the undercarriage of the prisoners’ bus. He lost his grip and was crushed by passing cars at the Third Street tunnel.
Earlier this year, the District paid a $12 million settlement to prisoners who had been kept in jail beyond their release dates. The Legal Times reported Monday that lawyers for the inmates had filed a separate class action over these “overstays.”
