After a routine count at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice investigators found an inmate who had gone missing.
Officials reported missing 42-year-old Zachary Myrick on Tuesday morning. He was later discovered, according to TDCJ, inside the surrounding fence.
It was unclear at first if he was attempting to flee.
Details Of The Report
Myrick was found guilty in Harris County, Texas, in 2009 on two charges of aggravated robbery with a dangerous weapon. He has been in prison for 24 years.
According to a recent TDCJ investigation, a Huntsville inmate used security flaws and an understaffed security team to get off a Texas prison transport bus that was intended to take him to a doctor’s visit earlier this year.
When Gonzalo Lopez escaped from the prison transport bus close to Centerville, he was a convicted murderer. After murdering Mark Collins and his four grandkids, he subsequently perished in a gunfight with police.
Earlier Reports
According to two reviews of the incident released Thursday, a number of security lapses, including insufficient strip searches, improperly used restraints, a lack of staff, and an atmosphere where correctional officers became complacent, contributed to the Texas inmate’s escape in May that resulted in the deaths of five people.
Gonzalo Lopez, 46, managed to release himself from his handcuffs and cut through a caged part of the prison bus on May 12 before making his escape. Three weeks passed with him unhindered. On June 2, authorities shot and killed Lopez, but not before he had murdered Mark Collins, 66, and his four grandchildren, Waylon Collins, 18, Carson Collins, 16, Hudson Collins, 11, and Bryson Collins, 11, on the family’s ranch close to Centerville, which is situated between Dallas and Houston.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, or TDCJ, investigated the escape both internally and outside by hiring a firm to carry out an impartial investigation.
According to both investigations, Lopez’s companions on the bus and the correctional officials who worked at the Hughes Unit, where he was held, violated protocol by failing to conduct a thorough strip search of Lopez and checking that his handcuffs were securely fastened and unaltered.
If proper searches had been conducted, they probably would have discovered two 8- to 10-inch metal weapons that Lopez used to cut through the metal grating of a security door, allowing him to overtake the driver, as well as what appeared to be a handcuff key that he at one point concealed in his mouth.