It’s like deja vu all over again for folks in Oregon. In a headline that may sound like old news, an inmate has walked away from a correctional facility in the Beaver State.
Last week, Matthew Joseph Medlin, a man convicted and imprisoned on sex offender charges, escaped from the Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland. The bizarre element of the story is that Medlin was set to be released in just six days time. He would have been walking away a free man tomorrow.
Instead, Medlin ran. He was apprehended at a local Jack-in-the-Box restaurant by a corrections officer before the end of the day. He had climbed over the razor wire fence surrounding the minimum-security facility at which he was being held. He was still wearing his facility-issued clothing, with “INMATE” stenciled on it, when he was apprehended.
Now another inmate has made a run for it. He has considerably more time ahead of him, so it is a bit more understandable for him to bolt.
Clinton Orvill Swearingen II, 31, was discovered missing about 10:30 p.m. Sunday from the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras, Oregon. Swearingen had only been in the facility since February 4, and was not slated to be released until December 10, 2017, at the earliest.
Swearingen is jailed for one count of first-degree theft, two counts of second-degree burglary and two counts of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
He, too, is likely wearing his facility-issued clothes. The facility he escaped is a combination minimum- and medium-security location. It has been open for seven years, but Swearingen was the first inmate to escape.
A nearby hospital and three schools were locked down during the early stages of the manhunt when a vehicle Swearingen had stolen from a home near the prison was seen in the vicinity.
Image via YouTube
