Jailers suspended after Lovell’s escape
Two DeKalb County Jail correctional officers have been placed on administrative leave, with pay, pending the outcome of a TBI investigation into Friday morning’s escape of inmate Karen Lovell.
Sheriff Lloyd Emmons announced Saturday correctional officers Julia Rodriguez and John Washer are off duty pending the results of the independent inquiry.
“I don’t expect to hear anything for a week or two weeks and I certainly want to give the TBI all the time to get into that,” Emmons said. “I admit we made some mistakes, or I feel like we did. This will tell us what went wrong.”
Emmons said early indications are two policies were violated and if “it’s a clear-cut case then I’m going to have to take some disciplinary action, anything from days off to somebody losing a job because we have got to run a secure facility.”
He said the TBI has already informed him no criminal actions were made by the jail employees.
Emmons said it appears Lovell, upon her return from the hospital for a fake illness, “took advantage of a busy situation. I feel two policies probably were violated and this is what I want the TBI to look into so we’ll know without a doubt.”
“There was a gun in a place it was not supposed to be,” Emmons continued. “We do not allow guns in the annex and there were some keys left in a place obviously this inmate knew where they were. That’s another policy we have. We do not leave keys in cars, simply for that purpose. We don’t want to give anybody a chance to escape. We’re not going to make it any easier for them. Those are my two main concerns.”
Emmons also said the preliminary investigation showed after Lovell accessed the weapon, she forced two correctional officers into a conference room, threatening to kill them if they came out before she fled.
“I don’t know what she was going to do, but she took advantage of mistakes we made,” Emmons added. “She might have broken out anyway had we not made the mistakes, but she probably would not have been armed. I think if she was going to break out she would have done her best to do so anyway, regardless of the situation.”
But the sheriff made it clear policy violations will not be tolerated.
“It’s unacceptable when a mistake is this big,” he said. “I want to see what the TBI tells me, but my guess is this started out as a small mistake and it escalated into a large mistake.”