By Kenneth Heard
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
NEWPORT, Ark. — Police searched into Tuesday night for a state prisoner who authorities said jumped out of a moving inmate transport van between Newport and Brickeys earlier in the morning.
Authorities said they believe William F. McCoy, 46, was in east Jackson County. A resident reported seeing him running across his yard near Grubbs on Tuesday afternoon, said Ron Brown, Chief Deputy with the Crawford County sheriff’s office.
Police had transported McCoy back from Crawford County where he attended a court hearing Monday. He was charged with felony possession of a firearm and possession of controlled substances and is serving a 20-year sentence in East Arkansas Regional Unit at Brickeys.
It’s the third time McCoy has escaped from custody.
He broke out of the Independence County jail in Batesville twice. In October 1997 he broke out a second-story jail window with a metal cylinder from a breathing apparatus and jumped to the ground. Then, in April 1998, he picked the lock of his cell in the jail and climbed out a window with two other inmates using knotted bed sheets.
Brown said McCoy and 12 other state prisoners were returning to Brickeys from Crawford County when the van stopped at the McPherson Unit in Newport to drop off some prisoners.
“He was accounted for there,” Brown said of McCoy. It was the eighth time police transported McCoy from the East Arkansas Regional Unit to Crawford County for court hearings since fall of 2008, Brown said.
The transport van driver headed down Arkansas 384, but made a wrong turn at Arkansas 214, going west instead of east, Brown said. The driver went about a mile before turning around.
Brown thinks McCoy may have escaped when the van stopped to turn around on Arkansas 214.
Jackson County Sheriff David Lucas said McCoy broke the latch on a louvered-type window on the van, and then took the window off its frame. Authorities found the window in the back of the van when the remaining inmates returned to Brickeys at 11:30 a.m.
The driver of the van told police he drove slowly at times because of torrential rain that fell in the area.
“The rain kind of slowed us down in the search,” Lucas said.
A Jackson County resident used a small airplane to help search for McCoy, but did not spot him, the sheriff said.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler said investigators will question the other inmates on the van to see where McCoy escaped.
Police also searched near Wynne briefly because the van driver said he drove about 20 miles per hour on Arkansas 1 during heavy rains, and McCoy could have jumped from the van safely then. McCoy has a girlfriend in St. Francis County, Brown said.
According to the Arkansas Department of Correction Web site, McCoy is white, 5 feet 10 inches tall, has receding brown hair and blue eyes. He has a one-half inch scar on his lip. He has tattoos of two unicorns on his back, a bulldog on his right shoulder and an eagle on his left shoulder.
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