By MEG KINNARD
Associated Press Writer
COLUMBIA, S.C.- Two inmates were able to escape from a maximum security prison aboard a garbage truck because of staffing cuts, improperly compacted trash and toilet-paper heads made by other prisoners to delude officers, the chief of the state’s prisons said.
Officers were slow in detecting the Nov. 1 escape of Jimmy Causey and Johnny Brewer because inmates’ deception led them to flub a 7:15 a.m. prisoner count, Corrections Department Director Jon Ozmint told Gov. Mark Sanford’s Cabinet on Tuesday.
“These inmates had some help from some other inmates,” he said. “They had made some fake heads out of toilet paper” to fool officers, he said.
Ozmint said after a 9 a.m. count came up short, officials began a roll call, but he added that a final prisoner count was delayed further because dozens of prisoners were being released the day of the escape.
The chief of the State Law Enforcement Division has said it did not receive “a conclusive report” that Causey and Brewer were missing until about 11 a.m. _ almost five hours after the inmates are thought to have escaped.
Causey, a convicted kidnapper, and Brewer, a convicted murderer, were captured at a Ridgeland motel two days after escaping from the Broad River Correctional Institute.
Ozmint said budget cutbacks have forced his department to cut 800 security positions, leaving some areas like the trash compactor and loading dock unmonitored by officers.
The prisoners also “knew that we weren’t compacting the trash like we ought to” before it leaves the facility, and that the compactor wouldn’t kill them as long as the trash bin wasn’t full, Ozmint said.
Ozmint said procedures for compacting trash have been corrected throughout the prison system, but he would not elaborate.