Last of 10 New Orleans escapees captured after nearly 5 months following standoff with Atlanta police

By Jason Morris, Devon M. Sayers, CNN

(CNN) — The last of 10 prisoners who escaped nearly five months ago from a New Orleans jail has been captured at a home in Atlanta, according to the US Marshals.

Derrick Groves, who had been on the run since May 16 after breaking out of the Orleans Justice Center with nine other inmates, was captured Wednesday in Southwest Atlanta after a standoff with Atlanta Police and US Marshals, Deputy US Marshal Brian Fair said.

A tip called in to Crimestoppers Greater New Orleans, along with follow-up investigative work, ultimately led to Groves’ arrest in Atlanta, Fair said.

“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.

Groves waived his right to an extradition hearing Thursday morning in front of a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, saying he wanted to return to where he was from.

His capture marks the end of a key chapter in a brazen, nighttime jailbreak that grabbed the nation’s attention and put people close to the convicts’ cases – from victims’ relatives to prosecutors – on edge for their own safety.

The search for a convicted killer is over

Groves’ escape “represented a serious breach of public safety and a historic failure of custodial security,” New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams said Wednesday.

Groves, 28, was convicted of murdering two men on Mardi Gras in 2018 and was awaiting sentencing when he escaped in May, said Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill at a Wednesday news conference.

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.

“This was a very dangerous individual. He is going to face jail time for a very, very long time” for his previous charges as well as additional time resulting from his escape, Murrill said.

Groves will be taken to the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where the other nine former escaped inmates are being held, said Murrill.

Authorities are looking into upgrading the charges against Groves to aggravated escape “in light of the material” found on him, including weapons and drugs, Murrill said.

Federal, state and local law enforcement “worked together seamlessly to locate and arrest those fugitives,” said Col. Robert Hodges, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police.

In early October, officers assigned to the task force investigating the escape learned Groves was likely in the Atlanta area and through information “gathered via multiple search warrants and other investigative means,” detectives gathered digital evidence that Groves was at a home, Hodges said.

Several law enforcement agencies, including the Atlanta Police Department and the US Marshals Service, assisted in executing the search warrant at the home that led to Groves’ arrest, said Hodges.

“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 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.

CNN’s Isabel Rosales, Ryan Young, TuAnh Dam and Rafael Romo contributed to this report.

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