Two of the four inmates who escaped an Oklahoma prison by crawling to freedom through a hatch above their shower area were found on Monday afternoon, a day after their escape, police said.
The Caddo County sheriff said that Dylan Rey Three Irons, Prime Tounwin Brown, Anthony James Mendonca and Triston Tremayne Cheadle were in their shower when they climbed up through a maintenance door above the shower head into a narrow crawl space that houses the plumbing pipes in Caddo County Detention Center in Anadarko, Okla., early Sunday morning.
Brown and Three Irons were back in custody on Monday afternoon, police said. They were caught about forty miles south of the detention center.
The four escapees then crawled about 30 feet in the narrow pipe chase and broke through a cement wall into a utility room that led outside the jail.
Witnesses reported seeing men on the street in orange prison uniforms half a block from the jail around 2:40 a.m. local time, according to Cain.
Cain said that law enforcement officers were searching properties and abandoned houses in the area.
The men were serving time at the detention center for unrelated crimes. According to reports from the Caddo County Sheriff’s Office, Mendonca, 23, was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and escape after lawful arrest; Cheadle, 32, was charged with robbery with firearms; Brown, 23, was charged with second degree burglary and Three Irons, 21, was arrested on a warrant for probation violation.
Three of the men were scheduled to be transported from the County Detention center, but Cheadle was awaiting sentencing on an additional charge of possession of methamphetamine.
Cain warned that Caddo County residents should be careful and report any sightings to authorities.
“They’re considered to be dangerous and possibly armed,” he told TODAY on Monday.
Prison officials knew that some of the hatches in the two-year-old facility were not secured and were in the process of welding them shut. All but two of the hatches had been tended to when the escape occurred. Three guards were on duty, patrolling about 200 inmates at the time of the escape, Cain told NBC News.
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Four Oklahoma inmates escape through jail shower
NBC News' Kerry Sanders contributed to this report.