CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, S.C. — Channel 9′s Tina Terry got a look inside the Chesterfield County Detention Center where four inmates escaped on Oct. 14. They were later recaptured.
[ PAST COVERAGE: Authorities catch remaining inmates after escape from Chesterfield County ]
The men kicked down a door and climbed a barbed wire fence without anyone noticing for hours.
On Monday, Sheriff Cambo Streater brought Terry into the prison to show her how the inmates escaped, the consequences for one supervisor, and how leaders are working to prevent it from happening again.
Surveillance showed the four inmates throw a white mattress on top of a barbed wire fence and then jump over to freedom.
“It was a systematic failure on the age of the building and our employees failing to do their job the way they were supposed to do it,” Streater said.
The inmates got through the heating and air conditioning vent that was in a wall, Streater said.
“They kicked it in and got into a hallway that carries all the plumbing, HVAC to various areas of the building,” he said.
That hallway led to a steel door that the inmates kicked down and ran out of before jumping the fence.
Streater said that triggered an alarm.
“The alarm went off and dispatch, the 911 center, received the alarm,” he said. “They called and said, ‘Is everything OK?’ The supervisor informed dispatch and said, ‘Everything was OK.’”
The supervisor, who was in a separate building, couldn’t see from her surveillance monitors that anything was wrong.
“She should have sent somebody out to check the area where the door was,” the sheriff said.
The supervisor was terminated for not following policy, and all employees have been counseled on how to handle similar scenarios, Streater said.
They’ve reinforced the outside door, are considering adding more barbed wire, and maintenance has shored up the air vents in every cell to ensure no one can get out of them.
However, Streater said he needs a new jail.
“We are doing what we can, and we hope to be able to build our new facility,” he said.
The county council talked about the possibility of a new sales tax to pay for a new jail, but they ended up not putting that on the November ballot, Streater said. There is no word on if that will happen again.