The Associated Press
ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP) - An armed prisoner who escaped from a hospital was still on the loose Thursday night, but he might have already left town, police said.
“Tracking dogs followed the trail to the railroad tracks and stopped. So there’s a possibility that he got on a train, or someone picked him up,” said Alexandria Police spokesman Sgt. Clifford Gatlin.
Kenneth Cotton, 41, was being treated at Rapides Regional Medical Center Wednesday night and asked to use the bathroom. When the female guard bent over to remove his shackles, he took her .357-caliber Magnum, Gatlin said.
Cotton allegedly made the guard unshackle him, shackled her to the bed and taped her mouth.
“Unarmed security guards confronted him, he pulled the gun on them, and he walked out of the hospital,” Gatlin said.
Alexandria Police, Rapides Parish Sheriff’s deputies, along with chase teams from Camp Beauregard’s Work Training Facility North and Wackenhut were hunting Cotton Thursday.
Cotton was serving a 27-year sentence for second-degree kidnapping at Allen Correctional Center in Kinder, La., said Margaret Pearson, spokeswoman for Wackenhut Corp. Allen Correctional Center is a private corrections facility owned by the Florida-based Wackenhut.
In 1999, Cotton was charged with one count of intentional exposure to the AIDS virus, a felony. He was accused of spitting on another inmate during an argument on Oct. 18, 1999, after tests showed that he was HIV-positive.
Cotton had been serving a 60-day sentence for two counts of simple battery when he got into an argument with a trusty serving him a meal in the jail’s chow line. During the argument, Cotton allegedly spit on the trusty.
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter sent out a release warning residents to be on the lookout because Cotton’s last known address was in Houma.
When he escaped the hospital, Cotton was wearing blue hospital scrubs pants and a brown Wackenhut Corrections shirt.
He is white, 5 feet 10 inches tall, 260 pounds with a reddish complexion, brown eyes and long black hair.