GEORGETOWN, Ohio — Brown County Sheriff deputies caught an inmate minutes after his escape Saturday. However, there is concern in the community around the jail.
The latest escapee is the fourth in two years.
One inmate slipped out of the jail twice. John Bellamy lived it. The first of three escapees took his sister's vehicle.
"I think we were lucky when (he) stole the van over there that the guy wasn't apparently a violent person and he just hid out and got away," Bellamy said.
The inmate, Hobart Roark, broke a secure window to escape in November 2020, according to court records. Though caught hours later, Roark escaped again weeks later. Roark pled guilty and faces a minimum five-year prison sentence.
Last September, another man, Chase Andrew Martin, escaped through secure doors into the jail lobby, court records said. Officers caught Martin in the parking lot.
Both cases led to immediate security upgrades, Brown County Sheriff Gordon Ellis said.
Saturday, a glitch with another secure door allowed 21-year-old Craig Senteney to leave the jail, Sheriff Ellis said. Senteney then climbed over razor wire fencing and tried to hid in a neighbor's yard, Sheriff Ellis said. Deputies caught him 49 minutes later.
Each time inmates escape, the Georgetown Police Department responds. Already understaffed, the mayor and police chief said spending resources on jail escapes concerns them as village officers have their hands full with other calls.
"Here we have to catch them and clean them is what they like to say," Chief Robert Freeland said. "We take it from the report all the way up to potential arrest. So we can't hand things off to other people and say here, go investigate this. Go follow up on this because you're it."
Sheriff Ellis said his office fixes every system, training and security failure. They repaired door glitches and plan to add new layers of protection. His office also installed two secure jail cells.
Still, COVID-19 pandemic side effects bring the county detention center more felony prisoners than ever, Ellis said.
"So our challenge is we're dealing with inmates who are looking at much more significant time, but they're being held in county jails that were not built to security standards of a prison," Ellis said.
For Bellamy's family, there's no anger. They just want to be safe.
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