CLEVELAND, OH — A Cuyahoga County jail inmate was able to escape custody and run through a Cleveland hospital, out the door and down the street before being caught, according to records obtained by News 5 Investigators.
According to incident reports, it happened on July 22, once doctors cleared Luther Tyes to return to jail after the 32-year-old had a seizure after being taken into custody for a probation violation.
In an incident report, a deputy wrote that Tyes was shackled and in a wheelchair following his discharge from MetroHealth’s emergency department around 2 p.m. that day.
The deputy said he left Tyes with a corrections officer as the deputy went to get the car.
That’s when investigators said Tyes stood up, ignored the officer’s demands to sit down, ran back into the hospital, through the emergency department and out a door on the other side of the building and onto the street.
A MetroHealth police officer spotted Tyes running along Scranton Road and detained him, according to the police report.
A detective wrote that Tyes “created a potential risk of physical harm to patients, medical staff and families present in the emergency department.”
In a statement, a Cuyahoga County spokesperson wrote, “when one of our residents requires medical care outside of the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center, it is standard practice to assign both a deputy and a corrections officer to escort them to the hospital. This protocol protects the public, hospital staff, and the individual receiving care.”
But the union representing Cuyahoga County’s deputies questions having unarmed corrections officers accompany deputies when taking inmates to and from the hospital.
“Working in a public place like a hospital is very different from a secured facility,” said Colin Sikon with Laborers’ Local 860. “I think training is absolutely paramount to this operation going without a hitch, and we're having hitches.”
Sikon isn’t alone in questioning the training jailers receive in transporting inmates outside the jail.
Adam Chaloupka, who represents the county’s corrections officers, believed the jailer wasn’t trained to handle what happened outside the emergency department that day.
“Failing to actually have adequate programs and policies, and training on the policies, and the tools and equipment that you need to excel is a failure on the part of the sheriff's department and the county,” said Chaloupka.
Chaloupka worries that without changes, public safety could be at risk.
“It would just take one inmate to run into one room of a person who hadn’t been searched yet for one of these weapons and now you could have an inmate with a gun armed in the hospital,” Chaloupka said.
The statement from the county spokesperson did not address what went wrong in this case or what changes were planned to prevent future escapes.
The Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office said it was reviewing the case for potential felony charges.
