LA VILLA, Texas-
A former police officer about to face trial on drug charges and five alleged members of a violent drug gang overpowered a guard and cut through at least four fences to escape from a federal detention center near the Mexican border, officials said Wednesday.
The six inmates, including a former McAllen police officer and the alleged members of Raza Unida, fled the privately run facility late Tuesday, officials said. It was unclear whether the overpowered guard suffered any injuries.
Authorities believe the escapees, who were wearing green inmate jumpsuits, were likely picked up in a vehicle on a highway that runs in front of the facility. Bloodhounds tracking the men had lost their scents at the roadway.
“We’re considering all six individuals very dangerous and armed,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said.
More than 60 local and federal law-enforcement officers using helicopters and bloodhounds were searching near the East Hidalgo Detention Center, about 20 miles north of Mexico near Texas’ southern tip.
Officers were searching door to door in La Villa, asking residents to stay home with their doors locked. La Villa schools were closed for the day, and a highway near the detention center was shut down. The facility is a minimum-to-maximum security unit with 950 beds, about 800 of which are federal.
“I think they’re scared. A lot of people are scared. They canceled school and everything,” said Raul Castillo, a 26-year-old convenience store clerk.
Trevino said the former police officer, Francisco Meza-Rojas, 41, was being held on federal drug charges related to a trafficking operation he is accused of leading. Meza-Rojas, accused with four of his brothers of smuggling, transporting and storing cocaine and marijuana, was to go on trial Oct. 3 and could get a life sentence if convicted.
The five other inmates who escaped were illegal Mexican immigrants jailed on a variety of charges, Trevino said. They are accused of being members of the violent drug gang, which is based in Corpus Christi and has cells elsewhere in the Rio Grande Valley.
LCS Corrections Services Inc., of Lafayette, La., bought the jail about five years ago and owns six other facilities in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama. Richard Harbison, a company vice president, said there previously had been one breakout at LCS’s facility in Pine Prairie, La.
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