By Jaime Adame
Abilene Reporter-News
KNOX COUNTY, Tenn. — Three inmates briefly escaped the Knox County Jail after pushing a jailer into a cell Saturday night, but the men were captured nearby about 90 minutes later.
Chad Roberts, city administrator for Knox City, said he first learned of the escape about 7:50 p.m. from a Knox City police officer.
As a jailer was doing a routine check on inmates, “one of the inmates had pushed her into a cell,” Roberts said. “They didn’t physically harm her.”
Several law enforcement agencies quickly arrived to assist in searching for the men in Benjamin, where the jail is located. Officers with the Haskell County Sheriff’s Department and other nearby counties helped, as did a local game warden and a state trooper, Roberts said. “We swarmed the area pretty quick,” Roberts said, explaining that the men were captured in Benjamin about 9 p.m.
“They had to have been laying low,” Roberts said. He did not have information about the identity of the men or why they were being held in the jail.
Attempts to reach Knox County Sheriff Dean Homstad were unsuccessful late Saturday night.
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