SC Manhunt for murderer & kidnapper.

[Steff]

Search on for violent prison escapers

Murderer, kidnapper used garbage truck to break out of S. Carolina prison

 

 

Updated: 9:18 a.m. ET Nov. 3, 2005

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A manhunt was on across South Carolina on Thursday for two violent inmates who escaped a maximum-security prison in the back of a garbage truck.

 

Johnny Brewer, 39, a murderer, and Jimmy Causey, 35, a kidnapper, were both serving life sentences at the time of Tuesday night's escape from the Broad River Correctional Institution in rural Jasper County at the southern tip of the state.

 

Investigators believe the escapees, who were involved with feeding and cleaning up after other inmates, somehow managed to hide in a trash bin.

 

“We won't know for certain how this occurred until we get them back,” said prisons director Jon Ozmint. “We feel fairly good about the theory they escaped in the Dumpster. It didn't take us that long to notice they were missing.”

 

After the escape, state police agents recovered a four-door, champagne-colored 2002 Oldsmobile Alero the two inmates were seen riding in on Interstate 26 in Orangeburg County, about 70 miles north of the prison.

 

Farther north in Richland County, just south of Columbia, a man and a woman were charged with helping the inmates escape and with lying to police. Another woman who was seen in the car was being investigated to see if she was helping the pair or was held against her will.

 

“We're treating her as a victim at this time,” said State Law Enforcement Division inspector Stacey Drakeford.

 

Ozmint said there had been some new developments in the case Wednesday but he refused to elaborate.

 

Brewer was convicted in the 1994 slaying of his sister-in-law. Causey was convicted of holding prominent Columbia attorney Jack Swerling and his family at gunpoint in their home in 2002.