Wielding knife, 4 escape Texas jail
Inmates overpowered guards, head for other states, police believe
MONTAGUE, Texas — Authorities set up roadblocks Tuesday and searched north Texas ranchland by helicopter for four inmates — two convicted killers and two people awaiting trial on murder charges — who broke out of jail by overpowering guards with a homemade knife.
The FBI joined the search as officials warned that the fugitives might be headed to other states.
“We have just about everybody out just in case they slip through,” said Dee Hazle, a sheriff’s dispatcher in Waurika, Okla., 45 miles northwest of Montague.
She said officers patrolled near the Red River, which forms the boundary between the states.
Two of the inmates were serving life sentences for the 1996 murder of a 16-year-old Oklahoma cheerleader.
The other two — a man and a woman — were arrested in November and charged with killing an elderly couple on whose land they had been living.
“These are some of the most dangerous individuals that exist in our society,” District Attorney Tim Cole said.
“There’s no question in my mind they’ll arm themselves at the first opportunity. The two men with life sentences just have absolutely nothing to lose.”
It was not known if the inmates had stayed together or split up after the escape late Monday from the Montague County Jail.
Officials said there was a chance the four might already have left Texas.
Authorities were alerted in the states where the fugitives have relatives and friends, including Oklahoma, Missouri, Oregon and Alaska.
On Tuesday morning, a discarded black-and-white-striped jail uniform was found under a tree near the jail.
The fugitives were identified as Curtis Gambill of Terral, Okla.; Joshua Bagwell of Waurika, Okla.; and Chrystal Gale Soto, 22, and Charles Jordan, 30, of Bowie, Texas. Gambill was serving two life sentences.
The district attorney said Gambill and Jordan, wielding the homemade knife, attacked a female guard who had opened the men’s cell to retrieve a cleaning bucket.
The inmates forced the guard and the only other guard on duty to release Bagwell and Soto, and placed the guards in a confined area.
The prisoners then walked out the back door and drove off in one jailer’s sport utility vehicle, Cole said.
The two female guards were not hurt and were able to escape and alert deputies.
The district attorney said the jail was full at the time of the breakout, “but that’s no for lousy security.”
Eight inmates had been transferred to another county Monday, bringing the Montague jail population down to 47, said Terry Julian, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
He said that brought it to within state staffing requirements. excuse