The last fugitive from the high-profile, 10-man New Orleans jailbreak in May has been captured, according to authorities.
In an announcement on Wednesday, Jason Williams, the New Orleans district attorney, said that authorities had captured four-time convicted killer Derrick Groves after a standoff at a home in south-west Atlanta.
“Groves’ escape represented a serious breach of public safety and a historic failure of custodial security,” Williams’ statement said. “His capture brings long-awaited calm to victims, their families, the witnesses who testified, the assistant district attorneys who prosecuted him and the people of New Orleans who were rightly concerned that a convicted violent offender had escaped so easily and evaded justice for so long.”
The home that Groves was hiding in had been gassed several times, according to several law enforcement sources who spoke to WWL. Additionally, Brian Fair, the deputy US marshal, said that Groves “was hiding in a crawl space”, adding: “It appears he was the only one in this house, and he was hidden pretty well.”
A few months prior to his escape, Groves was convicted in October 2024 in a 2018 double murder on Mardi Gras. Groves, who had the most violent criminal record among the escaped men, was found guilty on two charges of second-degree murder as well as two charges of attempted second-degree murder in that case.
He later pleaded to charges of manslaughter in connection with a double killing in 2017.
His involvement in the jailbreak cast a particularly unflattering light on New Orleans’ long-troubled criminal justice system. He is the grandson of Kim Groves, who filed a brutality complaint against a New Orleans police officer before the officer then hired a hitman to fatally shoot her in 1994 in what was one of the city’s most notorious murder cases.
The officer, Len Davis, eventually received a death sentence. But at the end of his presidency, Joe Biden commuted Davis’ punishment to life imprisonment amid a grant of clemency for 37 federal death row inmates.
Wednesday’s capture of Groves, who was the last fugitive from the jailbreak, came nearly five months after his escape alongside nine other inmates from the Orleans parish sheriff’s office custody on 16 May. The jailbreak, which was the largest in recent US history, occurred after the men pulled open a broken cell door inside their jail, squeezed through a hole behind a toilet, climbed a barbed-wire fence and fled from the facility through a loading dock.
Shortly after the inmates’ escape, released photos from the facility wall with a window-sized hole showed handwritten messages that included “Fuck OPSO,” in reference to the Orleans parish sheriff’s office that runs the jail.
Another message read, “We innocent.” Yet another screed – misspelled and using an abbreviation for “laughing out loud” – said, “To easy lol.”
Nine of the escaped men had been recaptured as of 27 June.
Following Groves’ arrest, Williams said: “We will pursue every available legal avenue to ensure that Derrick Groves answers for every crime he has committed and every consequence he has sought to avoid.”
Meanwhile, Susan Hutson, the Orleans parish sheriff, said: “Let me be very clear: when someone escapes our custody, we will not stop until they are found.
“For nearly five months, law enforcement across multiple states worked tirelessly to bring Groves back into custody.”
Hutson thanked Atlanta police, Georgia’s Fulton county sheriff’s office, the US marshals service, and her agency’s fugitive apprehension team “for their relentless pursuit and commitment to public safety”.
The sheriff is up for re-election on 11 October. A recent university of New Orleans poll showed Huston (13%) substantially trailing former interim New Orleans police department superintendent Michelle Woodfork (43%), who is one of five candidates challenging the incumbent in the primary election. A runoff if necessary would be in November.
