A D.C. inmate who escaped from custody while he was released from jail to attend his father’s funeral has been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.
Twenty-six-year-old William Brice Jr. was sentenced to 10 years for a shooting and robbery in Northeast Washington and 16 months for the subsequent escape in which he eluded authorities for nearly two years.
Brice had been on the run for nearly two years and was a member of The Washington Examiner’s Top 10 Most Wanted fugitive list before his capture.
At the time of his escape, Brice was awaiting trail on robbery and assault with a deadly weapon charges and for violating his parole on a previous weapons conviction.
The accusations against him were serious: On the night of Jan. 24, 2008, D.C. police said, Brice walked up to a group of people at Fifth and Dix streets NE, pulled out a .45-caliber pistol and fired at one of the men, wounding him in the buttocks.
As the victim fell to the ground, Brice approached and shot the man a second time. The shooting victim survived and Brice was quickly arrested at a nearby apartment office where he worked.
In April 2008, D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert Richter allowed Brice to be temporarily released from jail for three hours in the custody of one of Brice’s two public defense attorneys to attend his father’s funeral service.
Public Defender Chris Roberts promised Richter that Roberts would call “the minute there was any trouble,” according to a transcript of the hearing.
After attending the funeral with the attorney, Brice slipped away and Roberts never notified any authorities about the escape.
Authorities discovered that Brice was missing the next day after the D.C. Jail declared Brice overdue, authorities said. Instead of alerting Richter that his client fled, Roberts faxed a letter to the judge’s chambers, asking to be removed as Brice’s lawyer.
Authorities began a manhunt that turned into a multistate 19-month search.
Brice was finally captured almost by accident on the campus of Norfolk State University. In November 2009, a university police officer asked Brice for a student ID. Brice didn’t have one and provided the officer a Social Security number that turned out to be bogus, authorities said. That led to more questioning, and as the charade began to unravel Brice took off running. Police captured him a short time later.
He was arrested for providing a false identity, and while in custody police discovered his true identity and the warrant from D.C.
