The employee says that one of the inmates threatened to stab him if he didn’t comply with a request to shut off the water to a specific cell used in the escape.
A maintenance worker at the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office has been arrested for allegedly aiding the brazen escape of 10 inmates from the Orleans Justice Center this past week, six of whom remain at large.
According to Murrill’s office, Williams admitted to investigators that one of the inmates instructed him to shut off the water in a cell through which the group later escaped. Rather than report the suspicious request, Williams complied, allegedly enabling the inmates to exploit a breach in the facility’s infrastructure—a hole behind a toilet.
“Instead of reporting the inmate, Williams turned the water off as directed, allowing the inmates to carry out their scheme to successfully escape,” Murill’s office said in a statement.
Williams said he was threatened by inmate Antoine Massey, who warned that he’d “shank” him if he didn’t cut the water supply, according to an arrest affidavit. Massey is one of six inmates still at large following the jailbreak.
A joint investigation by the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Affairs Division of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office remains ongoing. Williams was booked into the Orleans Parish Jail and was later transferred to another facility.
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“We will uncover all the facts eventually and anyone who aided and abetted will be prosecuted to the full extent the law allows,” Murrill said in a statement. “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.”
The Jailbreak
The breakout began in the early hours of May 16. Surveillance footage and early reports show that the inmates gained access to a compromised cell where a hole had been made behind a toilet, while a civilian technician assigned to watch over the pod briefly stepped away to get food.
From there, the group slipped through a loading dock door, crossed a secure perimeter road, scaled a barbed-wire fence using blankets, and ran across a nearby interstate highway under the cover of darkness.
The escape went unnoticed until a routine 8:30 a.m. headcount, more than seven hours after the inmates fled. Investigators later discovered that at least one of the steel plumbing bars in the escape cell had been deliberately cut with a tool. Above the opening behind the toilet, graffiti read “To Easy LoL,” with an arrow pointing toward the hole.
Murrill sharply criticized the delay in detecting and reporting the escape, saying the public was not warned in a timely manner.
“Someone clearly dropped the ball, and there’s no excuse for this,” Murrill said in an earlier statement. “The first priority in any escape must be the immediate capture of the inmates … but that effort cannot come at the expense of timely notification to the public.”
Three employees have been suspended without pay pending the investigation. Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson acknowledged the seriousness of the security breach, admitting that it’s “almost impossible” to escape from the jail without help.
Three others—Kendall Myles, Robert Moody, and Dkenan Dennis—were arrested shortly after the breakout. The inmates face a variety of charges, from attempted second-degree murder to illegal weapons possession.
“We will not stop until we rid our streets of these criminals,” Landry said.
More than 200 officers from local, state, and federal agencies are in the manhunt for the remaining six fugitives.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
