A D.C. inmate charged in a shootout with police admitted Thursday that he hid a handcuff key in a bandage, then assaulted an officer while escaping last March. Terrence Moore Jr., 29, jumped from a prison van in the United Medical Center parking lot on March 11, 2010, when he arrived for treatment of a wrist injury. He threw a gate from a prisoner cage into a jail guard and ran away, court records say. Moore was apprehended later that night.
Moore pleaded guilty to escape and assault charges in federal court in D.C. His plea agreement says prosecutors and defense attorneys have agreed Moore should receive a 12-year prison sentence for both those charges and a separate PCP case.
His attorney couldn’t be reached Thursday afternoon.
Moore was awaiting sentencing on the PCP charges and awaiting trial in the police shootout case at the time of the escape.
He was shot by police when he ran from narcotics officers into a locked home in Southeast Washington in 2009. They exchanged fire, and he was shot in the hand.
In jail, Moore obtained a handcuff key that he hid in the metal-splinted bandage on his hand, according to plea documents. The splint allowed the key to remain undetected even if Moore was strip-searched or was scanned with a metal wand.
The day he escaped, Moore used the key to unlock the shackles on his legs and left hand, the documents say. His right hand was already free because it was in a cast.
Moore pushed a cage gate into the guard who was letting him out of the van, then fled. Court records say Moore called Georgia Davis, a woman he met at the jail. Davis picked him up and took him to the home of one of his children. Someone in the area called police after learning that Moore was hiding in the car, and he was apprehended after a brief struggle.
An X-ray that night showed Moore had swallowed the handcuff key. But it has never been recovered and “its current location remains unknown,” according to court documents.
Davis was charged with concealing Moore from arrest and was sentenced to probation.
A D.C. Superior Court jury in September convicted Moore on seven offenses related to the 2009 shootout. A mistrial was declared on six other charges, and another trial is scheduled for August.
