Authorities in Texas are searching for a convicted killer early Friday who he said escaped from a correctional bus the day after he stabbed the driver in the arm and drove the car off the highway into a cow pasture.
Authorities have deployed dogs and helicopters to search for 46-year-old Gonzalo prisoner Artemio Lopez, who was serving a life sentence for killing a pickaxe man.
“As you can see from his file, he is very dangerous,” Robert Hirst, a public information officer with the U.S. Department of Criminal Justice, said in a telephone interview Thursday night.
Numerous police agencies have joined the search for the prisoner at the intersection of two major highways in rural Leon County near the city of Centerville, Texas, which lies halfway between Dallas in the north and Houston in the south. News footage from the chase shows police, some on horseback, searching agricultural land near the crash site, inspecting a fence and stopping vehicles.
Mr Lopez escaped on Thursday afternoon when a long white bus carrying several prisoners was traveling east on Highway 7. He was taking him from a prison in Gatesville, Texas, to a medical examination in Huntsville, Mr Hearst said.
“Somehow – we don’t know how – he managed to get out of his restraints and then managed to get into the bus driver’s compartment, which was separated from the passenger area by a door,” said Mr. Hearst.
Mr Lopez quarreled with driver Randy Smith, stabbing him with a weapon in his left hand and forcing the bus to leave the motorway, Mr Hirst said, adding that the prisoner had escaped as a police officer on the bus, Tommy Brinegar, shooting at him. He said authorities did not know what type of weapon Mr Lopez had used to stab the driver.
The other 15 prisoners on the bus were in restraints and did not leave the bus, Mr Hirst said. The driver’s wound is not life-threatening, he added.
Mr Lopez was sentenced to death for the murder of a man in Hidalgo County 17 years ago after he kidnapped him and tried to ransom the victim’s wife, Mr Hearst said. His file includes eight other crimes in Texas, including attempted murder and aggravated assault, all but one in Hidalgo County, according to prison records. Mr Hearst said Mr Lopez had been convicted of attempted murder for shooting a deputy sheriff in Webb County.
“The most remarkable thing is that he killed a man with a pickaxe,” he added.
Mr Lopez’s first parole check-up was in April 2045, according to prisoner files. His estimated release date was not available.
The escape happened about a mile west of Centerville and about two-thirds of the 160-mile journey from Gatesville to Huntsville. A section of the highway was later closed, and the Leon County Sheriff warned residents nearby to keep their doors and vehicles locked.
Mr Hearst said prison escapes were rare in Texas and that authorities planned to continue searching for Mr Lopez in an area of about 10 square miles, which is slightly hilly and includes farmland, forests and streams.
“We will not stop searching until we find him,” he said.
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