Kool-Aid Trick Helps Stir-Crazy Inmate Escape

An inmate broke through a jail ceiling and escaped down the side of the building on a bedsheet rope while her cellmate distracted guards by using red Kool-Aid to give herself what looked like a bleeding ear.

Jennifer Lockwood-Kerns, 19, was recaptured at a nearby motel Thursday night about four hours after she broke out of the Marion County Jail. She had been in jail on Virginia charges of theft and burglary.

Kerns and cellmate Corey Clayton, 21, removed plaster from a shower ceiling and using a broom to poke a hole in the roof, police said.

As Kerns squeezed through, Clayton, who was being held on a kidnapping charge, distracted guards by claiming she had an ear infection.

At the hospital it was discovered she had dabbed a strawberry Kool-Aid mixture on her ear with a cotton swab, Sheriff Ron Watkins said.

Meantime, Kerns shimmied down a rope of three bedsheets, but because the rope was well short of the ground, she had to grab onto window bars to make her way down farther. She jumped 15 feet onto the concrete below.

“That was a great escape,” Watkins said. “She desperately wanted out of this correctional facility.”