By Mary Beth Lane
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man who authorities say scaled a razor-wire fence to escape the Fairfield County jail annex this week was captured last night at a gas station off I-71, just north of Jeffersonville.
Authorities say that a review of jail procedures is in order because of the escape.
The inmate, Jeremiah C. Searles, 31, was captured in Fayette County at 7:15 p.m. with a woman thought to be his girlfriend, Fairfield County Sheriff Dave Phalen said.
Phalen said that Searles was at a Sunoco gas station on Rt. 38 when a Fayette County deputy spotted the car, which matched a description of one that Searles was thought to be traveling in with the woman. He was arrested after the car was blocked in by deputies.
The woman and another man in the car were taken into custody and could be charged, Phalen said. Their names weren’t released last night.
It is thought that on Monday, the day of his escape, Searles didn’t come in from outdoor recreation during deputies’ first shift, which ends at 4 p.m., Chief Deputy Jerry Perrigo said yesterday. His absence wasn’t noticed, however, until the 11:30 p.m. head count.
“It appears that we didn’t check closely enough when they came in from recreation. We are going to have to do head counts more often,” Perrigo said.
The review also will examine how Searles was able to scale the 12-foot fence without being observed. Phalen said last night that it’s thought he used socks to protect his hands from the razor wire because some of the fabric was found on the fence.
He went over a section that lies beyond a basketball court. There is a dip in the hilly terrain between the basketball court and the fence, and it is possible he lay there to conceal himself before scaling the fence, Phalen said.
Searles is a convicted sex offender who was sought on an arrest warrant filed in Missouri after he fled a supervised St. Louis halfway house last month.
Searles, who was sentenced to prison in Missouri for six years in 2006 for deviate sexual assault, was conditionally released from prison in November to the St. Louis Community Release Center, a prison spokesman said.
Searles was serving jail time for local convictions. He was sentenced on Feb. 7 in Fairfield County Municipal Court after pleading guilty to the misdemeanor offenses of falsification, possession of a controlled substance, obstructing official business and criminal trespass.
Whether a felony sex offender belonged in the jail annex is among the questions that the review will examine. The jail annex is supposed to be for minimum-security, misdemeanor offenders, Phalen said.
Felons are held at the maximum-security jail at 221 E. Main St., and misdemeanor offenders are held at the minimum-security jail at 342 W. Wheeling St.
Whether deputies knew about the Missouri arrest warrant and that Searles is a convicted felon are among the questions to be sorted out, Phalen said.
The sheriff said this was the first escape from the jail annex since the county opened it in November to relieve crowding in the county’s two other jails in downtown Lancaster.
The jail annex, at 5955 Revenge Rd., south of Lancaster, is the former Camp Reams boot camp at the Southeastern Correctional Institution. The county is leasing the building from the state.
Copyright 2012 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved