Teddy Kulmala
The State (Columbia, S.C.)
GREENVILLE COUNTY, SC — A man serving a life sentence for a murder conviction tried to escape a maximum-security prison in South Carolina, corrections officials said Sunday.
David Rollings Cauthen went missing from his cell Sunday at Perry Correctional Institution in Greenville County, the S.C. Department of Corrections said on Twitter. Officers found him hiding under a storage container for construction materials.
Additional details about the escape attempt were not immediately available.
Cauthen, 54, is serving a life sentence for a 2006 murder conviction from Lancaster County, corrections records show. He also was sentenced to four years for a conviction of criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature in Lancaster County.
He was found guilty by a Lancaster County jury in the 2004 stabbing death of his girlfriend, Brenda Steen, The Lancaster News reported.
Cauthen has two previous offenses involving escape attempts since he’s been incarcerated, corrections records show. One happened in August 2016 and the second happened in July 2018.
Since being incarcerated, Cauthen has gotten in trouble at the prison for possessing contraband including cellphone, weapons and escape tools, corrections records show.
Perry Correctional is located in the Pelzer area of Greeville County and is one of six maximum-security facilities in the S.C. prison system. These facilities house “violent offenders with longer sentences, and inmates who exhibit behavioral problems,” according to the Department of Corrections’ website.
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