By David Hench
Portland Press Herald
POTLAND, Maine — Portland police, Cumberland County sheriff’s deputies and the Southern Maine Violent Crimes Task Force scoured Portland on Thursday for a maximum-security inmate who was mistakenly released from the county jail.
Police said Ahmed Hussein Ismail, 23, should be considered dangerous. He is charged with robbery and aggravated reckless conduct with a gun.
Ismail’s release Wednesday night is the focus of an internal affairs investigation by the sheriff’s department. Sheriff Mark Dion said Thursday that he had not yet gathered all of the facts about how the embarrassing error occurred, but that he takes responsibility.
The incident began when someone arrived at the jail Wednesday night to bail out another inmate, Ismail Mohamed Awad, 20, whose bail was $240.
When someone seeks to bail out an inmate, a bail commissioner is called. The commissioner tells officers in the jail’s intake area the name of the person being bailed out so paperwork can be completed and the person can be prepared for release.
On Wednesday night, a corrections officer apparently called to the jail’s maximum-security pod and asked that ''Ismail’’ be brought to the intake area to be bailed out, Dion said.
Dion couldn’t explain why Ismail’s yellow jumpsuit, worn to indicate a maximum-security prisoner, didn’t alert anyone that he shouldn’t be released on $240 bail. Ismail was being held on $50,000 bail.
Ismail played along, Dion said, signing bail paperwork as if he was Awad and taking Awad’s clothes and identification.
An hour later, corrections officials notified detectives and issued a broadcast telling police agencies in the area to be looking for Ismail.
Authorities believe Ismail left in a car, but Dion wouldn’t elaborate, saying he didn’t want to interfere with efforts by the Southern Maine Violent Crimes Task Force to track him down. He could not say whether Awad and Ismail know each other.
Dion said the internal investigation could lead to discipline, but he wouldn’t say who was involved or what the penalties might be.
''They’re human, they can make mistakes,’' he said. ''It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.’' Dion said eight or nine people work in the intake area at a given time.
Dion said Ismail is the second person to be mistakenly released from the jail this year. A man who was supposed to be transferred to the Androscoggin County Jail on robbery and theft charges in August was released instead. He turned himself in the next day.
The jail handles close to 10,000 bookings and releases a year, Dion said. In the past five years there have been 12 incidents, including Wednesday’s, of inmates being released when they should not have been.
Ismail now faces additional charges of escape and aggravated forgery, for fleeing and for signing Awad’s name to jail documents.
Ismail’s lawyer, Robert Napolitano, said he has not heard from Ismail since he left the jail, and that he last spoke to him in November. His client is scheduled for a court conference Wednesday on robbery charges.
Ismail was arrested in March after witnesses said he fired a gun into the air at the Munjoy South housing complex. Although he did not have a gun at the time of his arrest, a police dog found a handgun that had been discarded nearby.
In July, Ismail and two other men were taken into custody as police investigated reports that a group of young men had fired a gun from a fourth-floor window at 658 Congress St.
Nobody was charged in that incident, but police closed the street for more than an hour. A resident who saw media reports about it identified Ismail as the person involved in a hold up June 26.
In that case, police say, a man demanded money, and when the victims challenged whether the gun was real, the man fired several shots into the air.
Portland Police Chief James Craig said Ismail was believed to be in the city Thursday, and that anyone helping him to hide could be charged with aiding a fugitive.
Ismail is of Somali descent, and Craig said police have been in touch with leaders in the Somali community, asking for their help in persuading Ismail to turn himself in.
''I want to assure the public, we will find the suspect. He will be arrested,’' Craig said. ''We have been working around the clock.’'
Dion said it is not unusual for people on the run to remain in areas that are familiar to them, where they know people who might help them.
Craig said police don’t know whether Ismail is armed, but were prepared for the possibility ''based on his past history.’'
Awad finally was released on bail at 2:20 a.m. Thursday, according to a timeline provided by the jail. He had to wait for someone to bring him a change of clothes, to replace those taken by Ismail. \
Copyright 2009 Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.