| Updated: 2/16 9:21 am |
Published: 2/15 6:30 pm
|
It sounds like the plot to a Hollywood movie. A plot to escape from the Creek County jail using a design flaw in the building, that may have involved an inmate connected to a Mexican drug cartel, was foiled.
Guards discovered the escape plot back in November. Two inmates, 23-year-old Jack Weems and 21-year-old Jackie Nunnamaker, somehow managed to get behind the jail's showers and inside the walls. Then somebody outside the jail removed the covering to an external vent and left a bag for Weems and Nunnamaker. Inside the bag corrections officers found clothes, drugs, credit cards, car keys, a gas-powered bb gun, and even a Tulsa County corrections officer's badge.
Investigators believe Weems and Nunnamaker were plotting to help another inmate, Leorado Ramos, escape. Federal agents say Ramos works for a Mexican drug cartel. Ramos has since been moved to the Okmulgee County jail.
The Creek County Sheriff's Office says the design flaw that allowed the inmates to get inside the walls has been fixed. Now the county is working with the building's architect and the contractors who built it to figure out who is to blame and who should pay for the repairs.
Sonya McKee lives less than a mile from the jail. Like most people in Creek County, she didn't know about the attempted escape until FOX23 News told her. She worries if one design flaw was found, inmates could eventually find others.
"It's very scary, and it's also intimidating," McKee said.
"These guys like to smoke cigarettes and stuff like that. That's not a big smuggling issue. And I don't care what drugs they do. But, the capability is there, and the guards do look the other way."
McKee worries other inmates will be inspired to start testing the limits of the jail and looking for other ways to escape, or smuggle more serious items into the jail.
"It could be something major," Mckee said. "Because it could be firearms."
The Sheriff's Office told FOX23 off camera that Creek County residents have nothing to worry about, but McKee isn't feeling any better about the situation.
"We all have small children around here. And it's not something that's acceptable to us."
In addition to sealing off the flaw behind the showers and the external vents, the jail has reinforced other areas of the jail and added more surveillance cameras. It is also preparing to build a large fence completely surrounding the jail building, so people can no longer get close enough to leave contraband where inmates could smuggle it in.
The Creek County Sheriff's Office told FOX23 News that a Tulsa County corrections officer's car was broken into, and that's how his badge was stolen and eventually ended up as part of an escape plot in Creek County.
The sheriff's office also says the company that built the jail has built jails in other cities using the exact same design. Creek County has been contacting those other jails to let them know about the flaw.
