Inmate scales 2 fences, flees from Arkansas jail

Manhunt underway for Newton County jail escapee

Ryan Campbell, 31
Ryan Campbell, 31

An inmate at the Newton County jail in Jasper scaled two fences and disappeared into a thicket by the Little Buffalo River on Wednesday before deputies could catch him.

Police searched throughout the night Wednesday, but Ryan Lessley Campbell, 31, of the Mount Judea area, remained at large late Thursday afternoon.

"It took him less than 30 seconds to be gone," Sheriff Keith Slape said. "He went up the fence, through the guillotine, across the second yard, over the other fence, then he lit a shuck out of there."

The "guillotine," as the sheriff put it, is a 2-foot section of razor-sharp concertina wire atop the 15-foot-tall chain-linked fence that surrounds the 24-by-12-foot concrete exercise yard on the north side of the jail.

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A second perimeter fence is 7 feet tall with three strands of barbed wire at the top, slanted inward at a 45 angle, Slape said. The fences are about 20 feet apart.

"Our perimeter fence is right on the riverbank," Chief Deputy Jarred Morgan said. "Once he gets into that thicket, it's just a matter of getting down to the river and hiding."

That's where the dogs lost Campbell's scent, Slape said.

The wires probably cut Campbell, but investigators found no traces of blood in the brush around the river, Slape said.

Campbell was arrested July 11 on preliminary charges of first-degree battery and aggravated assault, Slape said. The sheriff's office didn't make the arrest report available Thursday. Morgan said the case is still under investigation.

Campbell is considered dangerous. He was last seen wearing a black-and-white jail jumpsuit with orange foam sandals.

A dispatcher monitoring cameras in the jail's control room saw Campbell clear the fence around the exercise yard about 7 p.m., Morgan said. By then, Campbell was moving fast toward the second fence.

Slape said the jail has 36 cameras, and it's a lot for one dispatcher to monitor, especially when also fielding phone calls.

"She had to get up, and her back was to the monitor digging for some papers on another call," Slape said of the dispatcher.

Morgan said the sheriff's office should have two people watching the monitors in the jail's control room, but it can afford only one because of the budget.

"With two people in there, they might have seen him sooner," Morgan said.

In 2008, Newton County voters approved a half-cent sales tax to build a jail to replace the city's 104-year-old rock jail, which had been deemed unsafe.

But voters twice rejected another tax to pay to operate the new jail.

The jail was constructed and began housing prisoners in 2014, two years after it was completed.

To fund its operations, Slape accepts inmates from other parts of the state, and the Arkansas Department of Correction pays to house them at the jail in Jasper. Inmates from Newton County usually take up fewer than half of the jail's 30 beds.

Slape said several other agencies are assisting in the search for Campbell, including the Arkansas State Police, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and the National Park Service.

Metro on 07/22/2016

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