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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Brazen Escaped SC Convict Recaptured in Texas

A South Carolina inmate who broke out of a maximum-security prison using wire cutters flown to him on a drone was recaptured in Austin, Texas, on Friday.

(CN) - A South Carolina inmate who broke out of a maximum-security prison using wire cutters flown to him on a drone was recaptured in Austin, Texas, on Friday.

Jimmy Causey's arrest in an Austin motel room marked the end of his second brazen escape from prison in the past 12 years.

While the investigation into Causey's latest venture outside prison walls is ongoing, the authorities say he used a smuggled-in cell phone to orchestrate his escape, having co-conspirators on the outside fly him in a pair of wire cutters on a drone.

On July 4, officials say, Causey placed a dummy he fashioned in his bed and slipped outside, where he cut through not one but four fences at the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, S.C., about 38 miles outside of Charleston.

Officials say they still don't know why it took prison guards more than 18 hours to discover Causey was gone.

He was recaptured by Texas Rangers at about 4 a.m. Friday morning after they received a tip about his location. When he was found, Causey had $47,000 in cash, a hand gun, a shotgun and four cellphones in his possession.

Causey was sentenced to life in prison after kidnapping an attorney at gunpoint in 2004 and then escaped with another inmate in a garbage truck in 2005. He was re-captured three days later at a motel after a pizza delivery woman called authorities.

The police are still searching for Causey's accomplices.

Categories / Criminal, Government, Law

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