UPDATE
Mar 21, 2024 4:23 PM CDT
An Idaho prison gang member and his accomplice, the subjects of a regional search since an ambush and escape early Wednesday from a Boise hospital, have been taken into custody, police said. Skylar Meade, the escapee, and Nicholas Umphenour were captured about 2pm Thursday in the Twin Falls area, about 130 miles from the hospital, after a brief vehicle pursuit, ABC News reports. State police are investigating two homicides that may be connected to the pair. Lt. Col. Sheldon Kelley said two men were killed in separate locations, per the AP. Police found shackles at the scene of one of the killings, and "that's one of the ways we tied them together," Kelley said.
Mar 21, 2024 5:48 AM CDT
Police in Idaho have identified the suspected shooter who helped a prison inmate flee a hospital in a "brazen" attack early Wednesday. Boise police described former inmate Nicholas Umphenour, 28, as an "associate" of 31-year-old inmate Skylar Meade, the Idaho Statesman reports. In a news release, the department said a warrant had been obtained for Umphenour's arrest on two charges of aggravated battery against law enforcement and one charge of aiding and abetting an escape. Police said both men, who escaped in a gray 2020 Honda Civic with license plate number 2TDF43U, should be considered armed and dangerous.
Umphenour's most recent sentence began in 2019 after he pleaded guilty to charges including unlawful possession of a weapon by a convicted felon and grand theft, the Statesman reports. It's not clear when he was released. Meade was sentenced to 20 years in 2017 for shooting at a sheriff's sergeant during a chase. Police say Meade is a member of the white supremacist Aryan Knights prison gang and has tattoos associated with the gang, including the numbers 1 and 11 to represent the gang's initials, the first and 11th letters in the alphabet, the AP reports.
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Police described Umphenour as 5-foot-11 and 160 pounds. Meade is 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds. Both men have brown hair and hazel eyes. "We are searching as quickly as we can, following every lead we can," Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar said Wednesday, per ABC News. "They could be anywhere at this point." Authorities say Meade was taken to a Boise hospital after engaging in "self-injurious behavior" at a maximum-security prison. Umphenour shot and injured two Idaho Department of Correction officers in an ambush in the hospital's ambulance bay, authorities say. A third IDOC officer was shot by a Boise officer responding to a report of an active shooter. (More prison escape stories.)
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