The escapee was at the hotel with his wife, and he refused to open the door when officials arrived.
By Jennifer Golson
Star-Ledger
NEWARK, N.J. — The inmate who escaped from a state-run dairy farm operated by minimum-security prisoners in Montgomery Township was captured yesterday morning 87 miles away at a South Jersey motel.
About 1:20 a.m., six members of the state Department of Corrections Fugitive Unit cornered 22-year-old Marc Harris at the Days Inn on West Landis Avenue in Vineland, Cumberland County, said investigator Ellis Allen, unit supervisor.
The Pleasantville man was at the hotel with his wife, and he refused to open the door when officials arrived, Allen said. Authorities had tracked him there through interviews with old friends and family members, according to the investigator. He had been there since Wednesday evening, he said.
Officers retrieved a key to override the door lock, and there was a struggle at the door until authorities handcuffed him, DOC officials said. Harris was wearing a pair of tan pants and a blue T-shirt, having long ditched his prison-issued orange sweat shirt and pants, and was not armed, they said.
Authorities took Harris to Riverfront State Prison in Camden.
Skillman Farm is a 500-acre breeding farm run by inmates nearing the end of their sentences at the Garden State Youth Correctional Facility in Burlington County.
Harris was serving a three-year sentence for drug distribution on school property, with six months mandatory, and he would have been eligible for parole in May. If convicted, he faces another three to five years for eluding, said Matthew Schuman, a DOC spokesman.
Harris now faces in-house charges, including escape and failure to follow orders, Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a DOC spokeswoman. He also could face criminal charges from the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office, she said.
Details of the escape continued to emerge yesterday. The parcel in Montgomery is one of six dairy and crop farms operated by AgriIndustries, a self-sustaining branch of the Corrections Department. While the farm will continue to operate, work by the inmates is suspended until further notice, Fedkenheuer said.
On Tuesday morning, one of the employees noticed Harris with a cell phone. “You’re not allowed to have a cell phone when you’re an inmate,” Schuman said.
“They sat him in the office, and they took the cell phone from him, and he tried to run away,” Schuman said. “One of the employees there tried to stop him.”
It turned physical, and Harris managed to get away about 9:40 a.m., officials said.
“We found articles of clothing . . . until he was down to his long johns, we believe,” said Sgt. William Crampton of the DOC’s Special Investigations Division. Harris had been working at the farm for about two weeks, Crampton said.
DOC officials arrived within 40 minutes, and Montgomery police, the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office and New Jersey State Police assisted in the search, Crampton said.
“We did a lot of searches in the wooded areas where the dogs were taking us,” Crampton said. “We would investigate all the sightings all the way through the evening. We were there, present all night long.”
There were multiple calls of possible sightings Tuesday, including one from Calhoun’s Garage on Route 518, where someone tried to steal a vehicle about 8 p.m., Montgomery police Lt. James Curry said.
About 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, police responded to a home on Route 518, just west of Route 206, for a reported burglary. A rear window had been forced open. Police found discarded clothing matching that of the escaped inmate, Curry said. Clothing, a backpack and a plastic jug with about $1,000 in coins and cash were reported missing.
The farm is located on a rural stretch of Burnt Hill Road, and the last escape occurred more than 10 years ago. The buildings on the parcel are located about a quarter-mile from Orchard Hill and Village elementary schools.
Harris’ escape put the township on edge, but local officials hailed the response by law enforcement. Still, further discussion about the farm is pending, Mayor Louise Wilson said yesterday.
“We’ll be meeting with correction officials to better understand their security measures and what, if anything, they plan to do to beef up security to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” she said.
“I expect that we’ll have a corrections representative either at our township committee meeting later this month, or possibly at our first February meeting,” Wilson said.
Copyright 2009 Newark Morning Ledger Co.