By Jeff Harrell
South Bend Tribune
WESTVILLE, Ind. — A reported escaped inmate from Westville Correctional Center didn’t escape after all.
Corrections officers on Saturday discovered Orville Morris hiding in a ceiling inside the prison pallet shop where he worked, nearly 24 hours after the 35-year-old inmate reportedly went missing from the LaPorte County correctional facility, WCC officials said in a release issued Sunday afternoon.
“I give up. I give up,” Morris reportedly shouted when prison officers checking the building late Saturday morning found the inmate holed up on a ceiling ledge along the facility’s industrial HVAC duct work.
“We never give up,” WCC Superintendent Mark Sevier said in the release reporting Morris’s capture. “Our teams went through the entire facility three times searching for him. We would keep on searching until he was found.”
Morris, of Marengo, has been incarcerated since July 19, 2014. Currently serving a three-year sentence for robbery, he just completed a 450-day sentence for felony theft and receiving stolen property, and is set to also begin serving an additional three-year sentence for felony burglary on Aug. 1.
Although Morris was projected to be released Jan. 30, 2019, new internal charges of attempted escape could add more time.
WCC officials said Morris will be placed in a high-security, restrictive housing unit and that all information compiled from the investigation will be referred to the LaPorte County Prosecutor’s Office for consideration of additional felony charges.
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©2017 the South Bend Tribune (South Bend, Ind.)