CONVICTS ESCAPE

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 October 1933, Page 3

CONVICTS ESCAPE

RIOT DURING BASEBALL GAME NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 13. While a baseball game was being played at Angora State Prison Fai hi, Louisiana, yesterday eleven convicts shot their way out of the camp. They were all long-term convicts. More than 300 police, with orders to “shoot and kill,” were to-day scouring Louisiana for the fugitives with the aid of bloodhounds. It is feared that the convicts have got clear away by swimming the Mississippi river. The manner of their escape closely resembled that of Harvey Bailey and his gang from Leavenworth Penitentiary a few months ago. That escape also occurred during a baseball game. Yesterday’s escape and the shootingstarted a riot in the camp, in which one more man was killed, and which lasted for more than an hour. Large detachments of armed police have today surrounded ‘a sugar plantation within which the fugitives may be.

At Angora prison there are 2,700 prisoners. When the eleven made their escape most of the prison officials were watching the baseball game, as also were a number of visitors, including women.

They had been confined to a cell in the centre of the camp. Somehow they had got possession of three rifles and several revolvers.

VISITOR SHOT DEAD As soon as the baseball game was well started the eleven rushed a “trusty”—prisoner who on account of good conduct has been made a guardknocked him down, and rushed the prison office. They seized additional arms from the prison store, and ran out into the open, making for the gate. A visitor to the camp, a carpenter named Fletcher, saw them and shouted. They shot him dead and ran on.

Reaching the gate, they demanded the keys of Capt. Singleton, who was guarding it. He refused. They fired again, wounding him in the chest, and grabbed”the keys. They had escaped almost before the prison officials on the baseball field realised that anything was amiss.

The camp superintendent ran after the fugitives, firing a fusilade. Two of the fugitives who had stayed to cut the telephone wires fell wounded. They were dragged by their companions into a visitor’s car standing in the road and driven off at a great pace.

The convicts killed a. man named William Stone whom they found in the car, and threw his body into the road four miles beyond the camp.

Meanwhile pandemonium had broken out in the camp as soon as the shooting was heard. A crowd of terrified women bunched together on the baseball field.

In one melee another “trusty” was killed, and a convict and a prison mechanic were wounded.

The escaping prisoners had cut the camp telephone wires on their way to the gate, but, after driving several miles, they abandoned their car and entered a large sugar plantation. A police cordon was thrown round this estate later.