BATON ROUGE (AP) — Authorities say one prison official has been fired and another has resigned in lieu of termination in the
wake of a convicted killer escaping last month from the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel.
Angela Whittaker, assistant to the secretary of the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections, told The Advocate officials determined that a "supervision issue" contributed to the Jan. 1 escape of Keana Barnes,
33.
Barnes had been serving a 25-year manslaughter sentence for killing two men.
"The policies are good and sound, but what
we found was that the officers that we let go were not making
appropriate rounds,"
Whittaker said. Had the policies been followed appropriately,
Whittaker added, "they would have prevented this from happening."
Whittaker was not authorized Monday to release the names of the officers held responsible, but said one was a sergeant and
the other a cadet.
New details also have emerged about how Barnes escaped.
Barnes, who shaved her head in the days
before her escape, broke a window in her dorm room, climbed out and
scaled a perimeter
gate, Whittaker said. Corrections officials have said Barnes
sustained a "fairly deep" cut to one of her fingers during her
escape.
"We suspect that she used a combination lock
to break the window," Whittaker said. "Offenders have access to two
combination
locks that they keep on their lockers. We suspect that she put
those two locks in some kind of sock and slung it at the window."
Federal and state authorities say they are
still working various leads trying to locate Barnes, including some that
have placed
her in the New Orleans area. Barnes has family there, authorities
have said, and she apparently has been getting assistance
to evade arrest.