RICHLAND COUNTY, S.C. _ An inmate who escaped a South Carolina maximum-security prison cut through four fences to gain his freedom for a second time during his long incarceration, authorities said Friday.
Jimmy Causey, 46, used wire cutters that likely were dropped onto prison grounds from a drone, said Bryan Stirling, director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, during a news conference on Friday to provide details of the manhunt.
Causey left Lieber Correctional Institution at 8 p.m., on Tuesday, the Fourth of July _ not Wednesday, as previously disclosed by the agency. Causey used a makeshift dummy to dupe corrections officers into believing he was still in his bed in the Dorchester County prison, Stirling said. That tactic is similar to what Causey did in his first escape in 2005 from a high-security Columbia prison.
When Causey was pulled Friday from at a Motel 6 room in Austin, Texas, he had $47,654 in cash, along with a semi-automatic pistol and a pump-action shotgun, said Mark Keel, chief of the State Law Enforcement Division, who agents worked on catching the fugitive.
Texas Rangers arrested Causey about 4 a.m., Keel said. The escapee did not put up any resistance.
"This was just good old-fashioned law enforcement," Keel said, adding a lead directed authorities to the Austin area more than 48 hours after he escaped. Causey had an 18-hour start before prison guards verified he had escaped, according to a timeline Stirling released Friday.
Causey had been in solitary confinement at the prison in Dorchester County, but had been moved to a general population wing that is overseen by two corrections officers, Stirling said. Once Causey is back in a South Carolina cell, he will be held in "high, high security," the director said.
Causey must have had help from others to make his escape, Stirling said. That remains under investigation, including whether corrections procedures were followed.
Stirling used Causey's escape to highlight his agency's campaign to get the federal government to allow state prisons to block cellphone signals on prison grounds.
"Well-planned escapes like this will continue to happen," as long as prisoners can use contraband cellphones, he said.
The suspected use of a drone to get wire cutters to Causey raises other concerns for state prison officials.
"We're spending $7.65 million on netting" to stop someone throwing items over the fence to inmates, Stirling said. "The next thing they're going to do is drones."
Causey was serving life sentences for the 2002 home invasion of well-known Columbia attorney Jack Swerling, his wife and their daughter, who were bound and threatened with guns.
Tuesday was the second time Causey broke out of prison. In 2005, while serving time at Broad River Correctional Institution, he and another inmate used makeshift dummies made of clothes and toilet paper to mislead guards. Causey then hid in a dumpster that was carried away by a trash truck.
With a different inmate, who also escaped, Causey rode the trash truck until they jumped off on Percival Road. The pair shed their prison clothes and got a ride to the Leesburg Road exit on Interstate 77. That's where Causey's ex-girlfriend spotted him and called her father, who reported the men to the authorities.
Causey and the second inmate were caught two days later at a Ridgeland motel when a pizza deliverywoman became suspicious after the men would not let her get a clear view of their faces, she told The State newspaper at the time.
Causey's latest escape will add to a criminal record that is nearly eight pages long and goes back to just after he turned 19, according SLED records.
In addition to convictions in 1989 for burglary, grand larceny and receiving stolen goods, his rap sheet includes convictions on similar charges in 1990 and 1991 and a rash of misdemeanor arrests throughout the '90s.
