2 from Texarkana jail still at large

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— Authorities searched Tuesday for two murder suspects who officials said escaped from a southwest Arkansas jail after they sawed through metal bars with a hacksaw blade, jumped out of a window and skirted a fence topped with razor wire.

Officials realized early Monday that Cortez Hooper and Quincy Stewart - one of whom was being held on a murder charge, the other of whom was a suspect in a different murder - were missing from their Texarkana cell about an hour after a guard checked on them at 3:15 a.m., said Chief Deputy Duke Schofield with the Miller County sheriff’s office.

Hooper, 23, and Stewart, 35, sawed through metal bars that covered a window measuring about a foot wide and 3 1/2 feet tall, Schofield said. They broke the glass pane with one of the bars, Schofield said, used a mattress cover to lower themselves about 5 feet down from the window and then jumped another10 feet to the ground.

Then, the two scaled a 10-foot fence topped with razor wire before scooting under another fence and off the jail property, Schofield said.

The men tried - unsuccessfully - to cushion their landing by squeezing a mattress through the window, but the mattress sailed across the way, Schofield said.

Surveillance cameras did not capture their escape, Schofield said, but inmates at the jail later said they heard some of the ruckus.

He said he believes they’re still in the Texarkana area, which is about 140 miles southwest of Little Rock.

“They have extensive families here,” Schofield said. “They may have left town, but I just got a feeling that they’re still here.”

Authorities at the jail are also trying to figure out how Hooper and Stewart procured a hacksaw blade or blades.

Court records show Hooper was charged last year with firstdegree murder and a weapons charge.

Hooper’s lawyer, Darren Anderson, said jury selection at one point was set to begin Tuesday, but that the case had since been rescheduled for later this summer.

Across the state line in Texas, Texarkana police spokesman Sgt. Steve Shelley said the department had a hold on Stewart for a capital murder charge in the killing of another man last year. The formal charge hadn’t been filed because he was being held in Arkansas on a drug charge.

Shannon Tuckett, listed in Arkansas court records as Stewart’s attorney, said she has not heard from Stewart in the past couple days.

Arkansas, Pages 15 on 05/30/2012

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