Last of 10 New Orleans escapees captured after nearly 5 months following standoff with Atlanta police
By Jason Morris, Devon M. Sayers, CNN
(CNN) — Derrick Groves, the last of 10 prisoners who had been on the run since escaping jail in New Orleans nearly five months ago, has been captured at a residence in Atlanta, according to the US Marshals.
Groves, who had been on the run since May 16 after breaking out of the Orleans Justice Center in New Orleans with nine other inmates, was captured in Southwest Atlanta after a standoff with Atlanta Police and US Marshals on Wednesday, Deputy US Marshal Brian Fair said.
Fair said a tip called in to Crimestoppers Greater New Orleans, along with follow-up investigative work, ultimately led to Groves’ arrest in Atlanta.
“It took almost three hours to locate him in the house, gas had to be deployed into the house multiple times by (the) Atlanta Police Department’s SWAT team, and he was ultimately located hiding in a crawl space,” Fair told CNN.
The search for a convicted killer is over
New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams said Groves’ escape “represented a serious breach of public safety and a historic failure of custodial security.”
Groves, 28, was convicted of murdering two men on Mardi Gras 2018.
He was one of the gunmen who opened fire with AK-47-style assault rifles “on what should have been a joyous Mardi Gras family gathering,” the New Orleans district attorney’s office said at the time.
Groves was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder, charges that carry a life sentence, the district attorney said.
“His capture brings long-awaited calm to victims, their families, the witnesses who testified, the assistant district attorneys who prosecuted him and the people of New Orleans who were rightly concerned that a convicted violent offender had escaped so easily and evaded justice for so long,” Williams said shortly after Groves was apprehended.
“We will pursue every available legal avenue to ensure that Derrick Groves answers for every crime he has committed and every consequence he has sought to avoid,” he said.
How the dramatic escape unfolded
Just after midnight on May 16, a corrections monitoring technician in New Orleans stepped away to get food. At the time, the Orleans Justice Center had been in lockdown since 10:30 p.m., as usual, with inmates expected to be in their cells for the night.
But in the technician’s absence, several inmates began tampering with the door of Cell Delta 1006. They pulled until it broke open and slipped into the handicap cell, where they used electric hair trimmers with multiple clipper blades to help cut through the cell walls behind a toilet, a source with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN.
They are believed to have placed the toilet back on the wall after the jailbreak to conceal the hole, according to the source.
Before all 10 inmates fled the New Orleans jail and crossed the Louisiana interstate into the warm, muggy night, they left a message on a wall on their way out.
“To Easy LoL,” it read.
The US Marshals credit Wednesday’s apprehension of Groves in Atlanta to a multi-agency law enforcement collaboration between the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, the New Orleans Police Department, the Louisiana State Police, Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI New Orleans.
“We’re just very pleased this one is over,” Fair told CNN.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement Groves will “face charges for his role in the escape,” adding, “I will ensure that he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
CNN’s Isabel Rosales, Ryan Young, TuAnh Dam, and Rafael Romo contributed to this report.
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