By Kathy Hedberg
Lewiston Tribune
COTTONWOOD — Law enforcement officers are continuing to look for two inmates from the North Idaho Correctional Institution at Cottonwood who allegedly escaped Wednesday while helping to unload a delivery truck outside the prison.
Tyler D. Davis and Dylan J. Ames, both 23, are accused of leaving the prison about 10:45 a.m. Wednesday. A search involving prison staff, Idaho and Lewis county sheriff’s deputies, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the Grangeville Police Department began almost immediately.
Lynn Guyer, warden of the prison, said residents surrounding the institution were notified by prison staff of the escape.
Guyer said he was in a conference room Wednesday morning when he saw the inmates unloading goods for the commissary suddenly take off running through the parking lot and into the trees north of the prison.
Neither Davis nor Ames were considered risks for escape, Guyer said.
“They didn’t have any issues going on,” Guyer said. “It’s hard to explain because these guys had been here about two months and were involved in programs and things were going well. We don’t have any idea why they decided to take off like that.”
Guyer said the search team included tracking dogs and all-terrain vehicle patrollers.
Davis, 23, is 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs 200 pounds. He has brown hair and green eyes. He was sentenced in Ada County in March to two to five years for grand theft.
Ames, 23, is 6 feet tall and weighs 175 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes. Ames is serving a sentence of five to 10 years out of Kootenai County on one count of possession of a controlled substance and two counts of illegal possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, according to the Idaho Department of Correction.
Guyer said the last escape from the prison was in January, when two men reportedly climbed over the fence and disappeared. They were captured a few days later in Walla Walla driving a stolen vehicle.
Before that, Guyer said, the last escape was in 2008. There are 414 inmates being held at the Cottonwood prison.
Jeffrey Ray, spokesman for the Idaho Department of Correction, said escaped inmates are sent to a county jail or other state institution upon capture and not returned to the Cottonwood prison.
Escape carries a maximum penalty of five years added to the escapee’s original prison sentence, according to the state, but it is up to the prosecutor in the county where the escape occurred to determine the charges.