Search on for five inmates who escaped St. Louis jail

ST. LOUIS -- Police continued searching Sunday for five inmates who escaped from a medium-security St. Louis jail by sneaking through the wall of a shower stall and using a sheet to scramble over a barbed-wire fence.

The escape Saturday night was the second from the city's workhouse in eight days. Officials from the city's construction division were at the jail Sunday afternoon, inspecting the damage and checking the rest of the facility, said Ed Bushmeyer, director of the city's department of public safety.

"They were looking through the facility to make sure there was nowhere else where inmates can punch through a wall and escape," Bushmeyer said. Late Saturday, the jail's head-count came up six inmates short, but authorities were able to confirm that only three prisoners had escaped, Bushmeyer said.

Sunday, Bushmeyer said the final inmate count was five short. Missing are: Donald Latroy Williams, 23; Ira Neal, 50; David Head, 49; Larry D. Catchings, 34; and James Lee Morrow, 53. Bushmeyer said the escape was apparently planned over "some period of time." He said the inmates who escaped apparently went through the ceiling of a shower stall before removing bricks from the side of the jail.

The men then scaled a chain-link fence and crossed coils of razor wire before fleeing on foot, he said.

A delivery truck driver reported the escape Saturday evening men in blue, jailhouse jumpsuits walking along a street near the lockup, Bushmeyer said.

On Feb. 15, murder suspect Derrick Boothe of St. Louis was accidentally freed after he switched identities with another inmate. He was caught Tuesday.

He said that after Boothe escaped, the lockup stiffened its security measures in hopes of preventing another breakout. That will happen again after this incident, he said.

In December, 53 inmates took control of a wing of the workhouse for about 30 minutes before guards quelled the uprising. The workhouse holds about 1,100 inmates on various state charges, each awaiting trial or hearings on parole or probation.