PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — District Attorney Larry Krasner unveiled dramatic video Wednesday that shows how two inmates escaped from the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center in May. It also details the security lapses that allowed the men to get away without being noticed, even through three head counts.
It took about 90 seconds for Nasir Grant and Ameen Hurst to break out of the prison on the evening of May 7. It wasn’t until more than 18 hours and three headcounts later that Philadelphia Department of Prisons Commissioner Blanche Carney said she was notified of their escape. It took authorities 10 days to track them down.
The newly released video shows Grant and Hurst opening the doors of their cells and simply walking out, strolling through a hallway. Then, with one inmate acting as a lookout through an unguarded space, they crawl out a door and into the prison yard, where they slip through a hole in the fence that had been cut seven weeks earlier — which, Krasner said, prison guards knew about.
“There’s video of them pointing at it, staring at it, indicating an awareness of what had happened with this piece of fence,” he said.
That was just one of the ways that Krasner said prison employees showed “malfeasance.” He also said a guard walked off his post halfway through an overtime shift, leaving the pathway to the prison yard unguarded for four hours. The next guard, who was supposed to do a head count, went to sleep.
“That correctional officer seems to have interrupted her sleep only long enough to go over and punch in the prior count number,” Krasner said. “A count is supposed to be a count. A count is not supposed to be a nap.”
Krasner said Hurst and Grant did get stuck for a half-hour between two fences, where there were sensors that were supposed to alert guards when someone was in the area.
“For anyone who’s been up there, you’ll know there are a lot of Canada geese. Well about a decade ago, Canada geese were setting off the sensors. Eventually, someone decided to turn [the sensors] off. They have been turned off for more than a decade,” Krasner said.
Hurst and Grant climbed the sensor poles to get over the fence.
Krasner presented these findings to a City Council committee Wednesday.
Carney also testified that she has begun making improvements, including new locks, lights and cameras as well as more employees, but understaffing remains a big problem.
“We have been obliterated by the pandemic and we are challenged with maintaining a population that is static — 4,700-plus — with a limited workforce,” she said.
Carney said the prison currently has 867 vacancies.