Police in Idaho are searching for Skylar Meade, an inmate who escaped from a Boise hospital where he was receiving medical treatment, after a gunman entered the hospital, shot two corrections officers, and then successfully escaped in a vehicle with Meade, in what police are calling a “brazen” and “apparently coordinated attack.”
Police tape cordons off the scene of a crime in Levittown, Pa., Saturday, March 16, 2024. (AP ... [+]
Boise police said Idaho Department of Corrections officials transported Meade to Saint Alphonsus hospital for medical treatment when, at around 2:15 a.m. Wednesday morning, a gunman entered the hospital and shot at the officers as they were preparing to leave with Meade.
The gunman’s identity remains unknown, police said, but a preliminary investigation determined both the gunman and Meade escaped in a gray four-door sedan.
The gunman shot two corrections officers—one was last reported to be in critical but stable condition, and the other had serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
A responding Boise police officer then shot a third corrections officer after arriving at the scene while mistaking them for the gunman—that corrections officer suffered non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
In a statement, Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar called the attack a “brazen, violent, and apparently coordinated attack on Idaho Department of Corrections personnel, to facilitate an escape of a dangerous inmate.”
He added that the suspects are “armed, dangerous, and have shown they are willing to use extreme violence in furtherance of their criminal activity.”
Meade was serving a 20-year sentence stemming from his 2016 high-speed flight from a traffic stop, in which he fired a gun at police officers in Twin Falls, Idaho. It’s not the first time Meade has gotten in trouble while incarcerated—in 2017, he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and to possessing a shank inside the Twin Falls County Jail, according to the Associated Press. According to a Times-News report from the time, police believed he aimed to use the shank against deputies.
1,100. That’s how many prison escapes have occurred in the last five years, according to a September analysis by CBS News. Experts told CBS that while prison escapes happen often, headline-grabbing escapes of dangerous individuals from high-level security facilities are rare. In one high-profile case last year, convicted murderer Danelo Cavalcante escaped a Pennsylvania prison and was on the run for nearly two weeks before police caught him. That escape was not coordinated with someone on the outside, and did not include a “brazen” act of violence. Cavalcante reportedly “crab-walked” up a wall and pushed through razor wire.