The Biloxi Sun Herald
GULFPORT, Miss. — Three Harrison County inmates were captured within hours, but law enforcement officers searched for a fourth through the night Sunday, after a pre-dawn escape from the maximum-security jail just south of Interstate 10.
The Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, assisted by state and other local agencies, were searching for Mark Kee Brown, 33, who had been jailed on a capital murder charge. Brown was on the loose for 18 days when he escaped from the jail in April 2000. Gulfport police finally caught him staying under an alias at the Scottish Inn on U.S. 90.
Warden Don Cabana said Sunday that Brown and the other three escaped between 2 a.m., when a guard is believed to have last seen them, and 6 a.m., when an inmate head count during a shift change turned up short. Cabana said jailers still are being interviewed to pin down when the escape occurred.
Sheriff Melvin Brisolara believes the inmates had help inside and outside the jail. When he took office three weeks ago, Brisolara inherited a jail where 80 percent of cell locks are broken, cell doors can be pried from their hinges, and security cameras no longer work.
The jail also is understaffed. At the time of the escape, two other inmates were on suicide watch, the sheriff said, so they had to be checked every 10 to 15 minutes.
The three inmates captured had on street clothes, so Brisolara believes Brown did, too. That’s one reason Brisolara thinks the inmates had help on the outside.
The inmates used books to pry a 300-pound steel door from a cell, then hid it under a plastic mold used to hold mattresses in the common area. The cell block has only 16 two-man cells, on two floors, but sleeps the overflow in the common area.
Jailers believe the inmates carried the door to a second-floor cell, where six men would have been needed to batter it against an outer concrete wall. The work was tedious, with rest breaks involved. The inmates pounded a 14-inch by 3-foot hole into the wall, one block thick. The blocks are filled with concrete and rebar.
They scaled two perimeter fences, each 20 feet high, cushioning razor wire at the bottom and top of the fences with jackets, pants and T-shirts. One inmate lost his orange rubber flip flop, still stuck Sunday afternoon to wire at the bottom of the inner perimeter fence. Blood spotted the concrete in one place beneath the second fence.
The Biloxi Police Department captured two inmates at Wal-Mart, the same place inmates headed after the 2000 escape. Biloxi officers spotted a truck the inmates had stolen from a business near the jail. It was running. The officers caught Timothy Shane Haynie, 27, and Dustin D. Griffin, 24, after they had been in the store to get shoes.
Haynie, a Texan, has been in jail since Jan. 11, charged by the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department with armed robbery of a business. Griffin, listed as homeless, was arrested Jan. 3, also for armed robbery of a business.
William Arevalo, 21, who has a Gulfport address, was arrested in June 2007 for aggravated assault. Records show he also was on hold for another agency for violation of immigration laws. Arevalo has been identified as a member of a street gang, MS-13.
He was taken into custody while trying to leave Cedar Lake Christian Assembly in Biloxi. Authorities believe he tried to steal a car from the church parking lot.
The three captured have been charged with escape.
Copyright 2008 The Biloxi Sun Herald