Bold New Orleans Escape Calls Attention to Poor Jail Conditions
At around 12:30 a.m. on May 16, 2025, 10 detainees escaped from a New Orleans, Louisiana jail through a small rectangular hole in a cell wall. Images showed a metal toilet and sink torn from the wall; etched above the hole was a smiley face with its tongue out and taunting messages that read “We Innocent” and “To (sic) easy LOL.” The brazen escape from the Orleans Parish Justice Center went undetected until a routine morning headcount more than seven hours after the men had sprinted out of the facility and into a nearby neighborhood.
By that evening, three of the escapees—Kendall Myles, 20, Robert Moody, 21, and Dkenan Dennis, 24—had been captured. In a press conference, Orleans Parish Sherriff Susan Hutson claimed that they were able to escape due to “defective locks,” and that it would have “almost impossible” for them to flee the facility without outside help.
Three jail employees were immediately placed on leave and, in the following weeks, at least 16 people were arrested for allegedly aiding the escapees. Those arrested included Sterling Williams, 33—a jail maintenance worker who, although perhaps unaware of the plot, admitted to shutting off the water that allowed the toilet and sink to be removed—as well as Darriana Burton, 28, a former Orleans Parish Sheriff’s office employee who is believed to be the girlfriend of escapee Derrick Groves, 27.
As the manhunt expanded, escapees Gary Price, 21, and Corey Boyd, 19, were captured in New Orleans on May 19 and May 20, 2025, respectively. Lenton Vanburen, 26, was arrested in Baton Rouge on May 26, 2025, after police were tipped off that he was sitting on a bench near a department store. Two of the escapees—Jermaine Donald, 42, and Leo Tate, 31—led officers on a high-speed chase in Walker County, Texas before being apprehended. With only Groves remaining at large at the time of publication, Antoine Massey, 32, was captured in New Orleans on June 27 following an anonymous tip. Massey, who faced charges of rape, kidnapping, and domestic violence, had gone viral after posting videos on social media in which he claimed he was innocent and had been “let out” of jail. In one video, Massey appealed to rapper Lil Wayne, Pres. Donald Trump (R), and a list of other “people that have been through the system that we know is corrupt.”
Long before the escape, the New Orleans jail had been plagued by overcrowding, understaffing, security concerns, and crumbling infrastructure. Roughly one-third of the jail’s cameras were reportedly broken, and the jail had been holding around 1,400 detainees, a number well beyond the 1,250 that a city ordinance mandates. As PLN reported, these conditions led to a class-action lawsuit that resulted in a 2013 consent decree and the construction of a new jail facility; that decree was largely ignored for more than a decade [See: PLN, June 2024, p. 51]. Two of the 10 escapees had been held in the jail for at least two years, symptomatic of lengthy stays that contribute to overcrowding.
Sources: USA Today, New York Times, Nola.com