Jose-Luis Cocom, the first of five escapees to be captured

Jose-Luis Cocom

The ruckus at the prison started in Tango Ten, the same building in which five prisoners escaped. One of the inmates Thirty year old Jose-Luis Cocom who was in jail for Burglary, Committing a Mischievous Act and Maim  was captured in Orange Walk today.  The other four escapees, thirty year old Terry Bainton, Thirty five year old Dennis Quilter, Forty five year old Juan Melendez and twenty two year old Jose Melgar are still on the run.  The prison officials are still trying to figure out how they escaped since in addition to getting out of two cells on Tang Ten, the men had to get through at least two locked gates before overpowering security personnel.  Woods says that that guard is being questioned about the incident.

Jose Sanchez

“Concerning the five prisoners who escaped, have you found out how they managed to escape repeatedly and managed to pull the plug on that?”

John Woods, CEO, Kolbe Foundation

“ Well, that’s the first escape we had out of our new super max building so that was a surprise for us. Our procedures were not really followed and I’m not too sure about the guy on duty, if he was involved. The guys that escaped are notorious because of their escaping. That guy Quilter is accused of having wings on his shoulder because the last time he escaped and went to the states, it was like he flew over a whole stack of people. They were coming off the bus and he was gone. Anytime there’s anything like that happening we review the whole process; how in the world did something like this happen because it shouldn’t happen, not out of that building. You just shouldn’t be able to escape.

John Woods

You got locked cells, a flight and the flight doesn’t face another bunch if cells, it just faces the wall. So you can’t have an interaction between this cell on one side of the flight and another cell because they don’t face one another. In that flight, you have about three separate gates and I understand those gates were not locked that night which is slackness. The way I understood it is that they made this little device to get through the padlocks on their cell doors and then they got out. I think there were two guys in one cell and then three in the other cell and they all came out. So the five got out and then they overcame the one guard that was on duty. From that they got the key for the main gate and came out, went over fence and were gone.”

Rowland Parks, Amandala

“Did they take weapons?”

John Woods

“Definitely not. Our official thing was safety and it’s a police problem. We did do our major stuff on Sunday night. I flew in and at five-thirty in the morning I was trying to land and man it’s difficult because even over there some of that bush is tight, tight, tight so when you get underneath you can’t see.  I landed and then I was in a meeting and then I got a call saying that they had spotted them down by the dump and that there was a vehicle maybe somebody was going to pick them up and he abandoned the vehicle and there were six people out there. So I went and got helicopter from Astrum and we did a really detailed searched. I thought it was bad on the plane going so fast, but in the helicopter we stopped right over the thing but still just like that we couldn’t see anything. Anybody could hide so, so, so easy. We had guys out there, we had them out there last night and we B.D.F. and the police looking but others also called. I understand there was a sighting of Quilter in Ladyville because Quilter and Terry Bainton are from the Ladyville area.”