By Mary Beth Lane
The Columbus Dispatch
LANCASTER, Ohio — Authorities continued the search for a Fairfield County jail inmate who escaped on Monday night by scaling a fence topped with razor wire.
Jeremiah C. Searles, 31, escaped from the county jail annex, a building located at the Southeastern Correctional Institution that the county leases from the state.
Searles used socks to protect his hands from the razor wire on the fence around the jail annex at 5955 Revenge Rd., said Lt. Tim Voris of the Fairfield County sheriff’s office.
Fairfield County Prosecutor Gregg Marx filed an escape charge yesterday. The third-degree felony carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
Marx said Searles should be considered dangerous.
Searles fled supervision at the St. Louis Community Release Center in Missouri last month and a warrant was issued for his arrest, said Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Cline.
He had been at the halfway house since being conditionally released from state prison on Nov. 30, Cline said.
Searles was sentenced to six years in Missouri prison in May 2006 and was placed on the state’s sex-offender registry after he was convicted of deviate sexual assault, court records show.
Searles, who had been jailed for local convictions and also was being held on the Missouri warrant, was discovered missing at about 11:30 p.m. Monday when guards made a head count.
Searles was sentenced to jail on Feb. 7. He pleaded guilty in Fairfield County Municipal Court to the misdemeanor offenses of falsification, possession of a controlled substance, obstructing official business and criminal trespass, records show.
He tried to escape from Lancaster police when he was arrested on Feb. 6, according to the incident report.
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