Authorities on Monday were still looking for two fugitives who escaped three days ago with seven others from a maximum security area of a county jail by using bed sheets tied into ropes, officials said.
The remaining seven escapees were captured by authorities — including a murder suspect discovered Saturday in his sister’s attic.
The men broke through the ceiling of the four-story Yakima County Jail and used a rope made of bed sheets to climb down Friday, authorities said. Five were recaptured on the jail grounds.
One of the two inmates still at large had been spotted Friday evening, but fled on foot before officers arrived, Police Chief Sam Granato said.
“We have no information on how they’re getting around or if they’re even still together,” he said.
The two missing men are Luis Soto, 28, of Toppenish, who was facing trial Jan. 3 on a second-degree theft charge; and Gianno Alaimo, 26, of Yakima, who had been charged with assault, officials said.
Responding to a tip, officers went to a Yakima home where a sister of escapee Santos Luera lives, Granato said. The officers found Luera and another missing inmate in the attic.
“They were verbally combative,” Granato said. “They weren’t happy they had been captured.”
Luera, 20, who faced a Dec. 5 murder trial for the shooting death of his stepbrother, had a broken leg and was taken to a hospital. Terry Moser, 25, who had been charged with assault, was also back in custody.
The breakout was similar to an escape by four inmates in 1994 from the same central Washington jail. Those inmates made a hole in a ceiling and followed ductwork to a roof vent, then used a bed sheet rope to reach the annex roof, the Yakima Herald-Republic reported. Two were injured when the sheets came apart. They other two fled to Mexico, where one was killed in a gunfight and the other was captured.
