Three correctional officers were shot — two by a suspect and one by responding police — during a brazen overnight attack to break a prison inmate out of an Idaho hospital, authorities said Wednesday.
Police throughout the region were looking for the suspected shooter as well as the escaped inmate, described by officials as white supremacist gang member Skylar Meade, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2017 for shooting at a sheriff’s sergeant during a high-speed chase.
Meade, 31, and the unidentified suspect fled in a gray four-door sedan, possibly a Honda Civic, with Idaho plates.
The attack occurred at 2:15 a.m. as Idaho Department of Correction officers prepared to bring Meade back to prison from Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Centre in Boise. Department Director Josh Tewalt said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon that Meade was taken to the hospital at 9:35 pm Tuesday after he engaged in “self-injurious behaviour” and medical staff determined he needed emergency care.
One officer shot by the suspect was in critical but stable condition, police said, while the second wounded officer had serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The third injured corrections officer also sustained non-life-threatening injuries when a responding officer — incorrectly believing the shooter was still in the emergency room and seeing an armed person near the entrance — opened fire.
“This brazen, violent, and apparently coordinated attack on Idaho Department of Corrections personnel, to facilitate an escape of a dangerous inmate, was carried out right in front of the Emergency Department, where people come for medical help, often in the direst circumstances,” Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar said in a written statement.
Meade, 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, has face tattoos with the numbers 1 and 11 — for A and K, the first and 11th letters of the alphabet, representing the Aryan Knights gang he affiliated with, Tewalt said. Photos released by police also showed an A and K tattooed on his abdomen.
Meade had been held in a type of solitary confinement called administrative segregation at Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, about 19 km south of Boise, because officials deemed him a severe security risk, Tewalt said.
The attack follows a wave of gun violence at hospitals and medical centres, which have struggled to adapt to the threats.
A Saint Alphonsus spokesperson said the shooting happened in the ambulance bay by its emergency department.
“All patients and staff are safe, the medical centre campus is safe and secure, and has resumed normal operations. The Emergency Department itself is currently under temporary lockdown while the Boise Police Department completes the investigation,” Leticia Ramirez said Wednesday morning in a statement.
She said as an added precaution, “we have increased security on campus, all entrances to the hospital will be closed” and monitored by hospital security until further notice.
Ramirez declined to comment when asked about Meade, deferring to the police department.
(Source: AP)
