New Orleans jail employee is arrested and charged with helping 10 inmates escape

A maintenance worker has been arrested and charged with helping 10 inmates carry out a brazen escape from a New Orleans jail last week, bolstering the suspicion among investigators that the escape would have been impossible without inside help.

The worker, Sterling Williams, 33, who was arrested Monday, shut off water at the jail, allowing the inmates to remove a metal toilet and sink fixture from a cell wall, the Louisiana attorney general’s office said. He claims one of the inmates threatened to “shank him” if he did not help them.

The inmates then used an unidentified tool to cut steel bars behind the cell room sink, leaving behind a hole in the wall just big enough to crawl through and a taunting misspelled message: “to easy LOL.”

The inmates left the jail through a loading dock, scaled a wall and ran across Interstate 10. A civilian employee of the sheriff’s office, who was the only person monitoring security systems in the part of the jail where the escape occurred, had left his station at the time to get food, officials said last week.

According to an affidavit, Williams told agents from the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation that an inmate with tattoos on his face, whom he called “Massey” but whose full name is Antoine Massey, “threatened to shank him if he did not turn the water off.”

Instead of reporting the threat, Williams told agents that he went into a pipe chase — an area where plumbing is concealed behind a wall — and turned off the water by closing a valve, the affidavit states.

With no water running, the inmates were able to remove the sink and toilet fixture from the wall, investigators said.

“If the inmates removed the sink in the cell and disconnected the rest of the plumbing with the water still on, the plan to escape would not have been successful and potentially flooded the cell, drawing attention to their actions,” the affidavit states.

Officials did not notice that the inmates were missing until a routine head count at 8:30 a.m. Friday, roughly seven hours after they had escaped, Sheriff Susan Hutson of Orleans Parish said last week. She said the office then activated “emergency protocols” and began a search for the inmates.

Four have since been captured, and a search is continuing for the remaining six, including Massey.

Williams has been charged with one count of malfeasance in office and 10 counts of principle to simple escape. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer. He was scheduled to make his first appearance in court Tuesday afternoon.

Officials said last week that they believed the inmates must have had help from jail workers. “It’s almost impossible — not completely, but almost impossible — for anybody to get out of this facility without help,” Hutson said at a news conference Friday.

Liz Murrill, the Louisiana attorney general, said in a statement that the investigation into the escape was continuing.

“We will uncover all the facts eventually, and anyone who aided and abetted will be prosecuted to the full extent the law allows,” she said. “I encourage anyone who knows anything and even those who may have provided assistance to come forward now to obtain the best possible outcome in their particular case.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.