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Deputy in jail break resigns
MANILA, Utah (AP) - A deputy in charge when two convicted killers escaped from a jail has resigned, the Daggett County sheriff said Friday as the manhunt continued for the pair.
Sheriff Rick Ellsworth did not identify the deputy, one of two people working Sunday when Danny Martin Gallegos, 49, and Juan Carlos Diaz-Arevalo, 27, climbed a fence and dashed from the jail, 120 miles east of Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake County killers were state inmates who were transferred to the jail during summer because the Utah prison was too crowded. Ellsworth said authorities rushed to a home Thursday in Evanston, Wyo., based on a tip that the men were holed up there.
''A team of Utah Department of Corrections officers and United States marshals responded, but it proved to be a false lead,'' the sheriff said. The biggest blow came Thursday when a man said he was lying when he claimed Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo had asked him for a ride two days earlier. Roadblocks were up for two days on U.S. 191, 35 miles south of the jail, based on the information.
''How cruel can people be?'' said Jean Balliger, the aunt of Gallegos' 18-year-old victim, who was killed in 1990. For the first time, Ellsworth described the escape. He said it was weeks in the making, based on interviews with dozens of others at the jail.
Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo slipped out of an outdoor courtyard through a door with a cluster of county inmates on their way to an adjoining garden. From there, they scaled a 12-foot-high fence topped with razor wire and made it to a roof, where they jumped to freedom. Ellsworth said problems that contributed to the escape have been corrected.
''I don't want to describe them publicly for security reasons,'' he said in a statement. Meanwhile, local, state and federal authorities in the manhunt ''are continuing to hit it hard,'' Ellsworth said.
A $20,000 reward was posted for help that leads to an arrest, but he warned against people trying to make their own capture. About 1,500 state inmates are housed at county jails, although that policy and security will be reviewed.
''We are aggressively getting a plan together to look at all the county jails,'' said Tom Patterson, director of the state Corrections Department. Article RatingReader CommentsSubmit a CommentCommenting RulesWe encourage your feedback and dialog. All comments are subject to deletion by our Web staff.
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