By C1 Staff
WINDSOR, Vt. — An inmate escape at the Southeast State Correctional Facility left employees wondering how to use a community-wide system meant to notify residents of emergencies.
The Valley News reports that Anthony Fitzgerald, 23, was recaptured after an eight-hour manhunt.
An internal review is looking into why the system that is supposed to send a recorded alert to registered phone numbers did launch properly. Prison staff ended up making the calls by hand.
“There was confusion on how to trigger it,” said Vt. DOC Commissioner Andy Pallito, stating that the system is fairly new. “The facility reports they did call everyone on their list manually though.”
The alert system is a third-party service for which the DOC contracts with a private firm. Pallito said the fault did not lie with the company.
The link on the Southeast State Correctional Facility’s website that allows interested parties to sign up to receive the alerts was broken on Monday, and found to be still broken on Tuesday.
Fitzgerald, who is serving time for lewd and lascivious conduct with a child, used gardening shears while working on a grounds crew to cut through a chain-link fence that surrounds the minimum-security prison.
Initial reports said Fitzgerald was missing for up to an hour before his disappearance was noted, but Pallito said this information is inaccurate. He withheld specific details due to the ongoing investigation, but did say that another inmate alerted prison officials to Fitzgerald’s escape within minutes of the breach.
Both the situation and failure to use the notification system will be discussed at an upcoming Selectboard meeting.