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Hunt For Escaped South Carolina Inmate Intensifies As Second Wanted Man Is Captured

Only one of three inmates who managed a brazen escape during an electrical malfunction at a South Carolina jail Saturday night remained at large Tuesday night.

After a 2 1/2-day manhunt across three states, a U.S. Marshals task force apprehended Tyshon Demontrea Johnson on Tuesday afternoon, according to WCIV.

"These guys haven't learned that it doesn't matter how far you run, we're right behind you," Orangeburg County Sheriff Leroy Ravenell told the local ABC News affiliate.

It is unclear where or how Johnson, 27, was arrested.

Curtis Ray Green, 20, remains on the loose.

Johnson and Green, who broke out of the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center, are both facing unrelated murder charges.

The two men escaped when a system glitch in a control panel automatically unlocked the doors to their cells, County Administrator Harold Young told WCSC news.

Once the control panel shorted, "it allowed the pod area to release the door locks — like it's designed to — because if you have a fire or electrical fire, you don't want people to perish by not being able to get out of those cells," Young said.

To reach a second control panel that opens other secure areas of the facility, Young said, four men pounced on a detention officer, punching and kicking him as he was attempting to re-establish order.

"It was a four-on-one scrap between one of the corrections officers, overpowered him, Maced him with his Mace," the county administrator recounted.

When the inmates reached the final fence separating them from freedom they realized they would need to protect themselves from the razor wire. "They ran back in, grabbed sheets and stuff, ran back out," Young said, adding that they threw the bedding over the barbed wire and ran off into the woods.

CBS reported the entire jailbreak took less than 10 minutes.

In all, three men made it over the fence — a fourth was detained by officers before he was able to make it out, the Times and Democrat reported.

Police recaptured Christopher Shannon Boltin on Sunday. The 27-year-old's father, Hoyte Boltin, was also arrested, for allegedly helping his son once he broke out of jail. The Boltins were taken into custody in Lexington County but are back behind bars in Orangeburg.

Boltin was awaiting trial on carjacking and grand larceny charges before the jailbreak.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Vanessa Romo
Vanessa Romo is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She covers breaking news on a wide range of topics, weighing in daily on everything from immigration and the treatment of migrant children, to a war-crimes trial where a witness claimed he was the actual killer, to an alleged sex cult. She has also covered the occasional cat-clinging-to-the-hood-of-a-car story.