More Inmates Escape the Kay County Jail

For the third time in 13 months, I have had the experience of covering an inmate escape from the Kay County jail, located in Newkirk, Oklahoma.

Doyle Dwaine Bertschy, 44, Ponca City; Kenneth Wayne Sherrod, 53, Newkirk; Ponca Green, 30, Arkansas City, Kan., and Benito Jose Bustos Jr., 45, Ponca City, escaped the county jail on sometime between 2 and 4 a.m. on July 9 through a skylight on the roof.

The county sheriff, Everette Van Hoesen believes that someone on the outside helped the inmates.

"We think someone threw a rope on the roof that they used to scale the wall to the ground," said the sheriff.

After reaching the ground, the four are believed to have gone to Sherrod's brother's house in Newkirk where they obtained a car.

A relative if Sherrod's was later arrested.

Undersheriff Steve Kelley said that the belief is, the relative purchased a rope and a change of clothes for the four.

Charges of aiding and abetting are still pending against the relative.

The four have since been captured.

Green and Bustos were arrested early July 10 by a Branson, Mo. police officer near Wal-Mart on Highway 76.

Branson police chief Caroll McCullough told Ky3.com that the officer thought the driver was drunk and pulled him over.

He said that as the officer questioned Green, the driver, Bustos took off running and jumped over a retaining wall at the east end of the Vista Plaza and broke both of his legs.

Bustos reportedly had surgery at Skaggs hospital.

McCullough said Green tried to strangle himself with his T-shirt as he waited to be booked into jail and passed out. He was taken to a hospital in Springfield, Mo.

Van Hoesen told county commissioners on July 13, that Kay County will have to pay for the pair's medical bills.

The county may get lucky and not have to pay Green's medical expenses because he had been sentenced to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and was awaiting transport.

The other two inmates were arrested later that day at an Econo Lodge in Branson after a

clerk recognized the pair and called the police.

Van Hoesen was not pleased with the escape of the facts that surrounded it.

The sheriff's department is not only enduring the embarrassment of a third escape in just over a yer, but also the fact that the inmates were gone for close to five hours before anyone noticed.

Courthouse employee Diann Bonifield spotted the rope on her way to work and the sheriff's department was notified at 7:36 a.m.

"I thought we had this escape stuff under control. I don't know what to say. My jailers should have seen this," the sheriff said. "These inmates climbed the wall less than 12 feet away from where a detention officer was sitting."

The jail is designed to hold 108 inmates. At the time of the escape, Van Hoesen said the inmate count was at 140 and three jailers were on duty.

Since the escape, the sheriff has appointed a new jail adminstrator and has been conducting more shakedowns at the facility.

A new county jail is being built and should be complete in 16 months.

The other escapes at the jail happened on June 5, 2008, when Darrin Dewayne Muegge, 40, Christopher Monce Barrera, 21, and Donald Lee Chapman, 23, escaped the facility through the south side fire escape.

On June 23, 2008, Muegge escaped the facility again, this time with Terrance Lucas Cottingham through the north fire escape.

For more on those escapes browes my AC library.