New details about the escape of a prisoner from a Pennsylvania jail reveal that he may have received help to go on the run as investigators' search for the fugitive goes into its seventh day.
Michael Burham, 34, is evading capture after escaping from jail in Warren, Pennsylvania, on July 6. Burham was being held on $1 million bail related to burglary, kidnapping, and other charges. He is a suspect in a homicide investigation, according to police.
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Warren County Commissioner Jeff Eggleston, who viewed the footage of Burham's escape, said in a press conference on Wednesday night that the inmate "looked like a spider" as he made his getaway from the rooftop recreational yard case using exercise equipment and bedsheets.
Burham climbed on top of workout equipment in the rooftop recreation room and squeezed through a hole at the top of the caged exercise area, Eggleston said. The inmate used bedsheets and tied them together to drop down to the ground from the roof.
Eggleston said Burham also breached a second chain link fence on the roof after finding a "small portion" that was broken. He estimated that Burham's entire escape took about 10 seconds.
Eggleston said Burham was in the recreation room with three other inmates. At the time of his escape, there were no guards inside the room, but jail staff were monitoring the cameras.
The commissioner has defended his jail staff, saying they responded within seconds of Burham's escape but that the inmate was too fast for them.
“The amount of time that he got out of that room was quicker than anybody could respond to get inside the room,” Eggleston said. "Within seconds of Michael Burham's escape, and that's him getting on the roof outside of the cage, our people were alerted. The entire facility was put on alert and began to respond."
"There was no delay. Nobody was having a sandwich. It wasn't a situation where somebody was asleep at the wheel," Eggleston added.
Over 200 officers across 15 federal, state, and local agencies are now involved in the manhunt for Burham. On Tuesday, authorities increased the reward for information leading to his capture to $19,500. It was previously at $9,500.
Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said Wednesday that authorities are looking for a person who was flying a drone near the jail around the time Burham escaped.
Bivens said that while there could be a "reasonable explanation" for the drone flying in the area, "I'm not a big believer in coincidences."
"If there's not an innocent explanation, perhaps that assists us in finding him and also finding anyone providing aid," he added.
Warren Police Chief Joe Sproveri told the Warren Times Observer that it appears Burham put an "extensive amount of preparation" into the escape.
Sproveri said his officers quickly set up a perimeter around the jail but did not have a sense of where the inmate was headed until about 60 to 90 minutes after the escape, when officers managed to review external surveillance footage from a nearby courthouse.
"There was a significant time delay before we knew where the track was to put the K-9,” Sproveri said. “[We] need a pretty specific location to start running a dog trail."
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Bivens said Burham is suspected of being armed and dangerous.
"Without going into a lot of detail, we have additional information that we have gleaned recently that causes me to have additional concerns that he may be armed," he said.