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3 inmates escape: Two inmates charged with murder and another escaped from a jail in Butler County, Mo.
Missouri officials are searching for three inmates, including two murder suspects, who broke out of a country jail overnight, it was reported. The men are considered armed and extremely dangerous.
The Butler County Sheriff’s Office said that Rodney Joe Green, Matthew Brandon Cook, and Kade Reaves Stringfellow escaped Monday at around 11:30 p.m. local time, reported KFVS-12 television. Stringfellow and Cook were being held on murder charges, while Green was being held on a number of assault charges.
Search crews have been deployed from Poplar Bluff, Mo. to Little Rock, Ark.
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The three inmates apparently climbed through the jail’s ceiling and escaped via the facility’s ducts.
“Myself and the previous two sheriffs have fought the design and construction flaws in this jail. It’s frustrating beyond words,” Butler County Sheriff Mark Dobbs told the station.
He added: “We have drywall ceilings in a jail. That’s just unfathomable. The walls don’t go completely up to the ceiling. It just baffles the mind when the jail was being built why there would be these shortcomings.”
Frank Casteel, the 911 director for Butler County, told The Associated Press that Missouri State Highway Patrol, Butler County officials, and police from other counties are taking part in the search.
“With the severity of their crimes they were being held for, we do believe it’s possible they may have the capability to get their hands on weapons,” Casteel told AP.
Clark Parrott, a trooper with the highway patrol, said that an airplane was deployed to aid in the manhunt.
Cook was charged with first-degree murder for taking part in the Feb. 19 killing of Sean Crow in a McDonald’s parking lot in Advance, Mo. Crow was found dead in his truck with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Stringfellow was charged with the second-degree murder of his infant son in July.
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