Hunt for ex-police chief who escaped Arkansas jail
The seek for a former Arkansas police chief convicted of rape and homicide continues after he escaped from jail on Sunday.
Grant Hardin was chief of police in Gateway, Arkansas – a small city of some hundred residents on the state’s border with Missouri – for round 4 months in 2016, in keeping with the Related Press.
The state’s Division of Corrections mentioned on social media that he escaped from the North Central Unit jail in Calico Rock at round 15:40 (20:40 GMT) on Sunday, the place he had been incarcerated since 2017.
The division added that Hardin was now not in his jail uniform, and was “carrying a makeshift outfit designed to imitate legislation enforcement” when he escaped.
Hardin, 56, stays at giant. The Division of Corrections urged anybody with data to “contact native legislation enforcement instantly”.
The division instructed the BBC {that a} “multitude of companies” have been concerned within the search.
The Pea Ridge Police Division additionally issued an alert on social media, saying Hardin “has quite a few connections and household in our space”.
They warned the general public to not strategy him, saying he’s “thought of armed and harmful”.
The previous prosecutor who helped put Hardin behind bars described him as a “sociopath”, KHBS 40/29 Information reported.
“Jail’s not filled with people who find themselves all unhealthy. It is filled with lots of people who simply do unhealthy issues. Grant’s completely different,” former Benton County prosecutor Nathan Smith instructed the station.
Grant Hardin pleaded responsible to first-degree homicide – the intentional killing of one other particular person – after fatally capturing 59-year-old James Appleton in 2017. He was given a 30 12 months jail sentence.
Mr Appleton labored within the metropolis’s water division. He was shot and killed whereas chatting with his brother-in-law, then-Gateway Mayor Andrew Tillman, on 23 February 2017, in keeping with the BBC’s US associate CBS Information.
Police later discovered Mr Appleton’s physique inside a automotive.
Whereas serving time for Mr Appleton’s homicide, DNA proof emerged linking Hardin to the lengthy unsolved rape of Amy Harrison at Frank Tillery Elementary Faculty in Rogers, Arkansas, in November 1997.
Based on an affiliate of CBS Information, Ms Harrison was raped at gunpoint whereas she exited a classroom to go to the toilet.
Hardin pleaded responsible, and obtained a sentence of fifty years.
Earlier than turning into Gateway’s police chief, Hardin served as an officer on the Eureka Springs Police Division (ESPD).
He resigned in October 1996 after he was knowledgeable by ESPD Chief Earl Hyatt that he was going to be fired for falsifying a police report, in keeping with the CBS Information-affiliated 5News.
“I used to be going to terminate him, however he resigned, and he was caught mendacity on a police report,” Mr Hyatt reportedly mentioned.
Chief Hyatt additionally mentioned he was not shocked at Hardin’s conviction, telling 5News: “He was simply all the time a really violent, extreme particular person, and had a very unhealthy mood.”
His escape from jail comes simply weeks after an unrelated incident during which 10 inmates broke out of a jail in New Orleans, Louisiana, after breaching the wall behind a rest room.