South Carolina inmate captured in Texas after second escape

Published:
Jimmy Causey is seen in a booking photo released by the South Carolina Department of Corrections. SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) An inmate was recaptured in Texas early Friday after his second escape from a maximum security prison in South Carolina, prison officials said.

The South Carolina Department of Corrections said in a Twitter message that 46-year-old inmate Jimmy Causey was in custody.

Corrections spokeswoman Sommer Sharpe says Causey was arrested by the Texas Department of Public Safety around 3 a.m. Friday.

Messages left with the Texas Department of Public Safety were not immediately returned Friday morning, but jail records show Causey was being held in the Williamson County, Texas, jail, north of Austin on a fugitive warrant obtained by U.S. Marshals.

The area is about 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) west of South Carolina prison where he escaped.

A news conference was planned at 10 a.m. Friday, Sharpe said.

Causey was missing from the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville on Wednesday afternoon. The prison is about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Charleston.

Authorities were still trying to determine how Causey made his latest escape from the South Carolina prison. No details have been released on that escape.

He and another inmate had escaped from a prison in Columbia in 2005 in a garbage truck and were captured three days later.

Causey was serving a life prison sentence after he was convicted of holding a Columbia attorney and his family at gunpoint in their home.

Following his first capture, Causey was held in South Carolina’s most secure, super-max facility in Columbia, but he was eventually returned to the system’s general population.

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