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Skylar Meade, serving time for aggravated battery, and accused
escape accomplice Nicholas Umphenour were taken into custody
near Twin Falls, Idaho, about 130 miles southeast of the Boise
hospital they fled early Wednesday morning, according to police.
During the manhunt for the two escapees, two other men were
found slain in two separate locations, in Nez Perce and
Clearwater counties, more than 200 miles north of Boise, the
state capital, Idaho state police said.
The two homicides were under investigation as "potentially tied"
to the prison escape and attempt to elude authorities that
followed, state police Lieutenant Colonel Sheldon Kelley said.
He declined to elaborate.
Meade and Umphenour were captured separately and without
"extensive use of force," following a short vehicle pursuit
around 2 p.m. local time, Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar told an
afternoon news conference. He said no shots were fired.
There were no details on how investigators tracked the two men
from the scene of their getaway outside Saint Alphonsus Regional
Medical Center, where Umphenour is accused of ambushing prison
guards as they were escorting Meade in shackles out of the
hospital.
Two corrections officers were shot and severely wounded by the
accomplice, and a third was slightly injured in gunfire from a
police officer called to the scene in the ensuing chaos, even as
Meade and Umphenour had already made their escape, police said.
Meade and Umphenour became acquainted while sharing a housing
unit of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution during an
off-and-on period from late December 2020 until Umphenour was
released in January of this year, according to state Correction
Department chief Josh Tewalt.
The two men also shared common acquaintances in prison and on
the outside and were both members of the white supremacist gang
known as the Aryan Knights, Tewalt said.
Meade, 31, was taken to the hospital on Tuesday night for
treatment of what Tewalt called "self-injurious behavior" that
prison staff found serious enough to warrant emergency medical
care.
He had been incarcerated since 2016 and was most recently housed
under administrative segregation, a form of solitary confinement
for inmates deemed especially dangerous, Tewalt said. Meade was
due for parole eligibility in October 2026, a decade before the
scheduled end of his current prison term.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie
Adler)
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