‘They tore a toilet off the wall’: How 10 inmates vanished from ‘train wreck’ of New Orleans jail

In the lifeless of night time on May 16, 10 inmates slipped out of the Orleans Parish Correctional Facility, some tearing by means of the wall behind a toilet, others merely strolling their method to freedom whereas jail employees remained oblivious for hours. It wasn’t till 8:30 am that anybody observed they had been gone.Now, 5 are nonetheless on the run. One of them is Antoine Massey, a seasoned escape artist with a rap sheet that features rape, kidnapping, and three prior jail breaks. Authorities had stopped even bothering with ankle screens, he stored reducing them off.So how did this occur? According to former federal warden Cameron Lindsay: this wasn’t a fluke. It was inevitable.“That jail’s a train wreck,” Lindsay instructed Fox News Digital. “Inmates tearing toilets off the wall to escape? That shouldn’t even be physically possible.”Lindsay, who ran high-security federal lockups for 20 years, mentioned the New Orleans facility was a “quintessential failure in corrections.” And it’s not only one second of negligence, it’s years of damaged methods, ignored warnings, and surprising inaction.Back in 2013, the jail was positioned underneath a federal consent decree attributable to rampant civil rights abuses. Twelve years later, the newest oversight report from October 2024 exhibits the facility continues to be failing: solely 42% of necessities are totally met, with one other 5% fully ignored. The relaxation? Barely midway there.The report reads like one thing out of a jail thriller: unchecked violence, inmates fashioning weapons, widespread drug use, and self-appointed “tank bosses” operating extortion rings inside the jail. Security checks? Not recorded. Staff? Outnumbered and outmatched.“This isn’t just mismanagement,” Lindsay mentioned. “This is abandonment of basic jail operations. These are inmates — not guests. If they’re not being watched, they’ll take control.”Massey, the most harmful of the escapees, ought to by no means have been in a common inhabitants unit, not to mention with eight different high-risk inmates. Lindsay says underneath his watch, Massey would’ve been underneath 30-minute irregular checks and recognized by identify to each staffer.“Why were nine high-security inmates in one cell? It’s absurd,” he mentioned.And when the escape occurred, the response was simply as chaotic. No alerts. No citywide discover. New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick solely discovered of the breakout by means of the media, not from the jail.“There’s no emergency protocol. No communication. No clue what they’re doing,” Lindsay mentioned. “The No. 1 rule in corrections is protect the public. When inmates walk out unnoticed and cops find out from TV? You’ve already failed.”It’s not the first time this jail has made headlines, and sure gained’t be the final. But for now, the public is left asking: if that is the greatest we are able to do to maintain harmful inmates off the streets, what’s subsequent?The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office declined to remark.