SOUTH COVENTRY TWP., Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — There is little doubt of the hard work that went into the two-week effort to recapture escaped prisoner Danilo Cavalcante, but the lucky break that led law enforcement directly to the spot where search teams could finally close in on the fugitive Wednesday morning comes down to a late-night cigarette break.
Cavalcante was caught shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday in a heavily wooded area of Pottstown. The events that led police there started with a burglar alarm that sounded around midnight at a home near Prizer Road in South Coventry Township, within the search perimeter.
However, that alarm had nothing to do with Cavalcante. According to the homeowner, who wants to remain anonymous, he set off the alarm by mistake.
“The house is locked up and alarm was set while we're in the house, and I walked outside to have a cigarette. And when I opened the door, the alarm went off,” he said.
That alarm immediately sent a notification to police, who were on high alert in the vicinity, the homeowner said. “The agencies were coming toward our house because the alarm was going off.”
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Lt. Col. George Bivens said tactical teams had been searching an area not far from there already that night. So police moved in to investigate the alarm.
“Did not did not find Cavalcante there, or anyone else, but it started to bring some of our people into that area,” Bivens said.
“There was an aircraft overhead utilizing [thermal imaging] technology, and close to 1 a.m., picked up a heat signal that they began to track.”
From above, authorities pinpointed a possible location for Cavalcante, about a quarter-mile away, and tactical teams began to converge on that position, west of Route 100 and north of Prizer Road.
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Later Wednesday morning, that’s exactly where Border Patrol agents released a canine to subdue Cavalcante, and where tactical personnel took him in.
“Because I opened the door without turning the alarm off,” said the homeowner. “That's what pulled everybody into the area.”
Even with a manhunt of this scale, which included thermal imaging technology, drones, helicopters, dogs, hundreds of personnel from U.S. Border Patrol, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, ATF, the Pennsylvania State Police, the Chester County District Attorney’s Office, and municipal partners in Chester, Montgomery, Delaware and Bucks counties — and the recorded voice of Cavalcante’s mother — sometimes it just takes one lucky break to push law enforcement over the finish line.
Asked if he gets a reward for that kind of tip, the homeowner said: “No, no. I'm good. I’m glad everybody's safe and all the agencies are safe.”
And now, two weeks after a convicted murderer escaped from Chester County Prison, he is back in police custody.
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Cavalcante's first name based on errors in official law enforcement and court documents.