IN THE MID-SUMMER COURT DOLDRUMS, A NEAR ESCAPE

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

The Cameron County courthouse crowd are still talking about the near-escape of a jail inmate from one of the third-floor district courts.

It seems that during the late July doldrums when judges and their staff and many courthouse employees take their vacations, leaving the court bailiffs short-handed who depend on the jail personnel and deputies from the Cameron County Sheriff's Dept. to lend them a hand in controlling the inmates in their court hearings.

According to the story, one of these inmates - seeing that the one bailiff was busy and jail personnel and deputies were nowhere to be seen - made a break for it and darted handcuffed out of the court and made for the stairs.

The inmate managed to run down a flight of stairs and was making his way to the ground floor before the bailiffs under the direction of Constable Abel Gomez at the doors were alerted and managed to corner the desperate man. After his court hearing, the angry bailiffs handed the inmate over the the sheriff's personnel who were not even aware of the attempted escape.

This reminds us of the inmate who was escorted to a medical appointment by a lone sheriff's deputy and ended up taking his gun and later shot and killed a man for his car before he was fatally shot in San Benito. Luckily, the inmate did not get hold of a weapon this time.

At the time of that escape, the sheriff's office say they were reviewing their policy of guarding prisoners when they left the jail for appointments. Maybe it's time for them to review the process and assignments of personnel when they take prisoners for court dates as well.