Inmate exploited security flaws to escape county jail

Detectives from the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department still were searching Monday for an inmate who made a gymnastic escape from the county jail in Coeur d’Alene – the first escape since the jail was expanded and modernized in 1986.

Police believe Neal G. McCrea – a 5-foot-5, 140-pound man – scaled 16 feet of chain-link wall at 8:30 p.m. Friday and hung there like a spider long enough to unravel a small square of chain-link ceiling.

He is believed to have then hoisted himself through the hole, skipped over a roll of razor wire onto the jail rooftop and made two 12-foot jumps – the last one dropping him into the unguarded public parking lot shared by the jail and the sheriff’s office.

From there, the long-haired McCrea, last seen wearing an orange jumpsuit and plastic jail flip-flops, vanished.

“There have been no sightings at all,” Capt. Ben Wolfinger, information officer with the sheriff’s office, said Monday afternoon.

McCrea was among five inmates spending scheduled time in an outdoor exercise yard – basically a concrete pad with stout chain-link fencing for walls and topped by a ceiling of more chain link that is covered with green mesh fabric to provide shade.

The other four inmates “have been interviewed twice, but they are not talking a lot to investigators,” Wolfinger said.

Detectives have spent several days in Spokane interviewing the 40-year-old McCrea’s friends and family. They believe the Spokane native and convicted bank robber may have retrieved his Jeep Cherokee from a previous girl-friend.

“This is a guy who needs to be back in custody,” Capt. Travis Chaney, jail commander, said. “We are really putting forth a lot of resources to get him.”

McCrea served nearly six years in Arizona prisons for bank robbery, police said, and was arrested in Post Falls on July 30 while he was parked near a credit union with a loaded, sawed-off shotgun.

He had been held since his arrest on $1 million bond, charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.

As the search for McCrea continued on the outside, jail staffers began a review of what happened inside the walls.

“We already had a meeting with the two division commanders, our maintenance supervisor and the administrative sergeant this morning,” Chaney said Monday afternoon, “and we went over all the physical security.”

The escape appears to have taken considerable effort and planning.

“I seriously doubt this was a one-time attempt and you’re gone,” Chaney said.

The amount of effort involved to unravel the heavy-duty chain link at the corner where the roof meets the wall, and then to unwind enough strands to make a hole in 14 minutes, would have challenged even the TV character MacGyver’s skills.

Instead, it appears repeated efforts were made to unravel the chain link, with progress concealed by the shade fabric, Chaney believes.

Inmates are typically allowed 30 minutes outdoors, but Friday’s session appeared to have lasted half that time. A jail staffer who counted the five inmates as they went outside at 8:30, counted four coming back in about 8:45 p.m. Friday, officials said.

“Had it not been for a vigilant jail technician, … it could have been hours” before the escape was discovered, Chaney said. Instead, police believe they were minutes behind McCrea.

The exercise area is monitored by two surveillance cameras, but it appears there is a “hole” in the coverage. McCrea scaled the chain link virtually underneath one of the cameras and the second camera, diagonally opposite, was aimed more at the ground than up on the wall.

Someone up on the fencing is completely invisible to the cameras, it turns out. “We had one of the deputies do it, shinny right up there,” Chaney said.

Chaney said this is being addressed with the possibility of a third camera. Jail staffers may also add more razor wire to the roof to seal off a path to the parking lot, or install chain link with a tighter weave that’s harder to climb, Chaney said.

“We are looking at every aspect of the system,” Chaney said.

At the time of the escape, one jailer would have been responsible for monitoring all the cameras, Chaney and Wolfinger said. Typically, a jail deputy making rounds would physically inspect the exercise area every 15 minutes, Wolfinger said. Chaney said he could not yet say if the inmates were escorted all the way out to the exercise area, or if a deputy visited the area during the exercise period.