Alleged victim of prison escapee speaks to ABC News: 'This guy could come back...and shoot me'
NEW ORLEANS -- An alleged victim of one of the 10 men who escaped last week from a county jail in New Orleans told ABC News in an exclusive interview Tuesday that he wants Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to resign.
"I would tell the sheriff to resign because she's not doing her job, not what the taxpayers are paying for," the alleged victim said.
Hutson suspended her election campaign Wednesday, saying it is just temporary. Her decision, she said, was to focus her attention on "security, accountability and public safety." The election is set for Oct. 11.
The sheriff said Tuesday the escape from the Orleans Justice Center was her "full responsibility."
"This breach happened under my leadership, and it is my responsibility to ensure it is addressed with urgency and transparency," she said in her statement Tuesday.
Hutson has blamed staffing shortages, an outdated surveillance system and aging infrastructure as critical factors that created vulnerabilities in the facility, located just outside downtown New Orleans. She said $13 million in upgrades are needed "not six months from now, not in next year's budget cycle, but now."
The alleged victim told ABC News he was disappointed in local authorities, adding he did not receive official notification immediately after the prison break Friday but instead learned it from a family member who heard it on the news.
"I was thinking about getting out of town because this guy could come back and look for my address and come in and shoot me on the couch," he said.
The person, who asked not to be named out of safety concerns, is an alleged victim of Kendall Myles, one of the inmates who was recaptured on Friday.
Myles, 20, is facing charges of attempted second-degree murder and armed robbery after authorities say he shot the victim during an alleged carjacking. The case is still open.
On Tuesday, the Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams told ABC News efforts were taken to put witnesses and victims in protective custody. Williams could not specify how many due to the sensitive circumstances. Two attorneys who prosecuted some of the escaped inmates' cases have also left town with their families as a precaution, Williams said.
"The DA is supposed to let me know when he's being transferred from one place to another, and they didn't do that," the alleged victim said.
"In fact, they had a press conference that night saying that they got in touch with everyone that was involved that had cases open, and I was one of them with Myles, and they never even got in contact with me," he said.
While the alleged victim wasn't initially notified of the escape, he says the DA's office later contacted him and has been keeping him abreast of relevant updates. The victim says he was not put in protective custody.
Williams told ABC News that Alison Morgado, chief of Victims Witness Support for the DA’s office, reached out to the alleged victim on Friday but the number they had on file was out of service. The DA said Morgado eventually got in touch with him and two members of his family on Monday.
The alleged victim, whose case has yet to go to trial, says he has lost faith in the DA's office.
The alleged victim's case, along with other pending cases against escaped inmates, had stalled in the courts. Gov. Jeff Landry has criticized Orleans Parish DA Jason Williams over the stalled cases, with the governor attributing the delayed prosecutions as one of many factors that led to the prison break.
Williams refuted the criticism from Gov. Landry who said the DA refused too many jailhouse charges against the recent inmate escapees and allowed cases to stall in Criminal District Court.
"The governor is dead wrong," Williams told ABC News.
Williams continued, "The governor suggested that we should have been able to prosecute cases coming out of the jail when we didn't have evidence. It is legally impermissible and ethically wrong to go forward with cases when we don't have evidence of guilt, and those cases would have been bounced out of court by jurors or by judges if we did not have that evidence, and we still haven't gotten it in a lot of instances, from the sheriff's office. "
Five of the 10 men have been captured. On Tuesday, Louisiana State Police took Corey Boyd, 19, into custody. He fled while being held on charges of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, aggravated battery, and threatening a public official.
All five men have been transferred out of Orleans Parish and are being held at the maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
More than 200 law enforcement officers from various local, state, and federal agencies are involved in the manhunt for the remaining five fugitives.
