By Laura Maggi, Staff writer
Times-Picayune
An inmate in Orleans Parish Prison on an attempted-murder charge escaped Sunday night, Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman said Monday.
Troy Barbour, 41, chipped away at one of the concrete pillars that line the House of Detention’s tower, digging a shallow opening visible from outside the building. The Sheriff’s Office has since put a steel plate over the opening.
A thin man, Barbour squeezed through the hole and shimmied down a rope made from shredded bedsheets, Gusman said. Descending five floors, Barbour landed on the roof of the first level of the building and fled. His escape was discovered Sunday at 10:20 p.m.
“People can’t easily get out of here,” Gusman said Monday morning at a news conference about the escape, but noted the challenges in keeping the jail’s population in place. The prisoners “sit up there trying to figure out how they can get out,” he said.
Barbour had been awaiting trial on a second-degree attempted-murder charge, accused of shooting a co-worker five times during a fight.
Maximum-security prisoners are held at the House of Detention, a building on the prison campus, a sheriff’s spokeswoman said. Barbour apparently had been digging away at the concrete pillar for at least a week and a half, Gusman said. Barbour dug his escape route in an area outside the inmates’ cells, separated by a hallway from the outside ledge lined with concrete pillars, officials said.
Since the escape, the Sheriff’s Office has “beefed up” its staffing at the location, and Gusman said he thinks he has enough deputies to handle security.
To scratch out the opening in the concrete, Barbour might have used a tool or other such material obtained from one or more areas under construction in the prison complex, Gusman said.
Wanted on a parole violation warrant in Michigan, Barbour came to New Orleans a couple of months before his January 2006 arrest and found a job gutting flood-damaged houses, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
While working in eastern New Orleans on Jan. 8, Barbour got into a fight with a co-worker and shot him five times, according to a news release last year by the U.S. Marshals.
After an intensive search, Barbour was arrested 10 days later while walking on Bourbon Street, said Deputy Marshal Brian Fair, a spokesman for the Eastern District U.S. Marshals Service.
Barbour, who also uses the name Mike Lee, should be considered dangerous, Gusman said. In Michigan, Barbour had been convicted of burglary and other offenses.
The Sheriff’s Office has been pursuing Barbour with help from the U.S. Marshal’s Crescent Star Fugitive Task Force, which includes New Orleans Police Department and other local law enforcement officers.
Barbour is a pale-skinned white man with brown hair and brown eyes, 5 feet 7 inches tall, 125 pounds and has tattoos on both his arms, including a peacock on his left arm and two skulls on his right arm. Anyone with knowledge of Barbour’s whereabouts should immediately call 911, Gusman said. The Sheriff’s Office can be reached at (504) 827-8505.
Crimestoppers is offering a cash reward up to $5,000 to anyone with information that leads to Barbour’s capture. The hotline is (504) 822-1111.
This is the second escape at Orleans Parish Prison since Hurricane Katrina forced a chaotic evacuation in its aftermath. Donald R. Tucker, who was convicted of a 2004 carjacking, was at the prison awaiting sentencing when he escaped April 11 and fled to Houston.
Tucker escaped possibly with help from inside the prison, Gusman said at the time.
In a filing at the U.S. District Court in New Orleans, federal prosecutors said the Marshals Service had determined in its investigation that Tucker was aided by other prisoners as well as accomplices on the outside whom he called on the prison phone. Tucker was captured by marshals on April 16 outside an apartment in Houston.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt in October sentenced Tucker to 65 years for the aggravated carjacking, using a firearm during the commission of a crime and illegally possessing a firearm as a felon. He later pleaded guilty to a charge stemming from the escape and was sentenced in November to another two-year term.
Copyright 2007 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company