By Fiona Stokes
The Virgin Islands Daily News
ST. CROIX — Bureau of Corrections officials say they are closer to making a determination about what really happened Sunday when an inmate was unaccounted for more than an hour.
According to the online police blotter — a listing of incidents and the times they were called in to emergency dispatchers — an escape from Golden Grove Adult Correctional Facility was reported at 1:10 p.m. Sunday.
V.I. Corrections Bureau Director Julius Wilson said Sunday night that the situation was “not really one of a true escape” and that the inmate was located a short time after prison staff noticed he was missing.
On Sunday, Wilson said the inmate — who now has been identified as Miles David — was a prisoner working in the facility’s farming program, and while the officer in charge was conducting a head count, David could not be unaccounted for. After a brief search, David was found on the property but in an area where he was not supposed to be at that time, according to Wilson.
On Monday, Wilson said prison officials launched a secondary investigation into the incident and determined that David had been unaccounted for for about 90 minutes.
David told authorities that he was tending the sheep on one side of the road when one sheep ran away and he chased it to bring it back to the herd, Wilson said.
However, prison officials do not believe David’s story, he said.
“What he is saying just does not add up, because we got a call from someone in the community who said they saw an inmate in someone’s yard in the area,” Wilson told The Daily News. “When we found him, though, we gave him a breathalyzer, and it indicated that he had been drinking alcohol.”
Wilson said David had been a reliable inmate and a model prisoner, and his going unaccounted for is out of character for him.
Until prison officials are able to find evidence that corroborates David’s story, they are treating the incident as an escape from custody, Wilson said. However, prison officials have not determined whether they will bring criminal charges against David, he said.
“What we have here is an inmate who will now lose his privilege to be in that farm program, and he won’t be eligible again for at least 10 years,” Wilson said. “He was a trustee, all the guys in the program are, and we won’t stop the program because of it, because it is proven that it helps the inmates to become better people.”