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BY MATTHEW VAN DUSEN
mvandusen@nwitimes.com
219.462.5151 | Sunday, October 16, 2005 | (No comments posted.)
The math didn't favor James Pridmore.
Just after 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 6, the 6-foot tall, 190 pound Pridmore tried to squeeze through a 1-foot hole in the roof of the Porter County Jail that he and fellow inmate Delbert Tompkins made after climbing through the ceiling of their cell.
Tompkins, the smaller of the two at about 5 feet 9 inches and 185 pounds, went through the hole first. Pridmore had gotten stuck in the roof while making the hole the night before, but this time Tompkins pulled his arms until he cleared it.
They ran to the southern edge of the roof and jumped onto an air conditioning unit just 8 feet below. Tompkins, a federal prisoner in for firearms charges, was already up a chain-link fence before Pridmore, who is awaiting trial for armed robbery, noticed the gate to the unsecured area was open. They went east toward the railroad tracks.
The escape was the culmination of months of planning for Tompkins.
"He almost seemed to brag about how he did it," said Porter County Sheriff's Police Detective Jeff Biggs, who interviewed the men after they were captured later that day.
What surprised investigators and county officials as they reconstructed the escape was not that it happened, but that it was so easy. Over two nights, the inmates found little resistance as they pulled out a recessed lighting unit, climbed through the ceiling and created a hole where a drainpipe had been.
The 1-foot wide hole was the greatest obstacle to freedom.
A lawyer for the jail's designer, Schenkel Shultz of Fort Wayne, denies responsibility for the flaws in the design of the ceiling and roof that allowed the men to escape.
"He can say whatever he wants, but we spent $38 million on this building and it was supposed to be secure," responded Porter County Attorney Gwenn Rinkenberger.
An analysis of the escape shows a series of failures, large and small, in the jail building that will cost the county $355,000 in jail repairs and could lead to a court battle between the county and Schenkel Shultz.
Where are the tools?
When jail officials discovered at 7 a.m. that Pridmore, 36, and Tompkins, 31, had fled, they looked at the escape route and wondered, where did they get the tools to do this?
They soon learned that Tompkins, who has experience in construction, had for months looked for flaws in the jail that he could exploit with his bare hands.
In mid-August, he learned he could remove the lighting unit in his cell by standing on a bunk, pressing against the ceiling with his shoulder and loosening the screws and bolts with his fingers. He figured out how to bunch up his mattress with ripped-up sheets to make it look like someone was in it and leave a piece of orange jumpsuit sticking out from the blanket.
Tompkins knew Pridmore from a previous bid and brought him in on the plan.
On the night before the escape, Pridmore climbed into the 4-foot area between the ceiling and the roof, called the plenum, and secured the lighting unit back in place with ripped-up sheets so guards wouldn't notice anything awry. While Pridmore was in the plenum, Tompkins talked to himself as though he were having a conversation.
Pridmore shook a drainpipe loose, and yanked out the insulation that surrounded it to create a 14-inch hole. At that point he was separated from the outside by only a drain cover, which he forced up by poking through the rubber membrane with a bolt.
At each step, Tompkins and Pridmore tested the jail's design and construction and found a way to beat them.
Sheriff Dave Reynolds said the county trusted the contractors and designer to build a secure jail, and they failed in a crucial respect.
"There's a difference between a builder's grade and a detention grade when you're building a facility," said Reynolds.
Assigning blame
County Attorney Rinkenberger and the jail's construction manager, Skillman Corp., of Indianapolis, believe the design of the cells was the first weakness that allowed the escape.
The steel used for the ceilings was thin enough that it could be flexed or even bent back, as one inmate found in February of this year. A contractor had questioned the designer's choice of steel tile during construction but was rebuffed by the designer, according to Skillman Corp. Vice President of Regional Construction Pat Portteus.
Also, the recessed, instead of ceiling-mounted, lighting allowed inmates access to the plenum once they found it could be removed.
Tom Herr, a Fort Wayne lawyer who represents Schenkel Shultz, said Porter County hasn't shown the firm any design flaw that would have led to the escape.
Schenkel Shultz, however, can list six causes for the escape, which Herr would not give because it would "cast aspersions on other parties," presumably the construction manager and the contractors who built the jail.
"It's not just the designer who was involved in this," Herr said.
Rinkenberger agrees.
She's also going after the bonding company for the jail's drain installers, the out-of-business Industrial Maintenance and Mechanical Co. The drain system, which acts like a sewer by taking water from the jail's flat roof, should have been clamped to the concrete roof deck, Portteus said.
Also, the insulated area around the drainpipe should have had a steel plate or bars over it to prevent the inmates from climbing through.
"Any hole that's big enough for a body to fit through should be secure," Rinkenberger said.
The two cell blocks that have the same construction as Tompkins and Pridmore's cell have been taken out of service while the ceilings are replaced and ceiling-mounted lighting is installed. Metal plates will be fixed around the drainpipe.
Rinkenberger said she will wait until the work is done and the bills are in before filing suit.
A brief respite from a life behind bars
Pridmore and Tompkins stole a truck about 3 miles from the jail and drove to Lake Station, where they were arrested at about 10:30 a.m. on the day of their escape.
Pridmore didn't talk to police. Biggs believes Tompkins didn't like jail and wanted to be in prison, where there are routines and more privileges.
They have been moved to separate facilities and charged with felony escape.
On the Web:
See a brief video of inmates' escape route from Porter County Jail at www.nwitimes.com.
Video courtesy Porter County Sheriff's Department
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