Grant Hardin: Hunt for ex-police chief who escaped Arkansas jail

The seek for a former Arkansas police chief convicted of rape and homicide continues after he escaped from jail on Sunday.

Grant Hardin was chief of police in Gateway, Arkansas – a small city of some hundred residents on the state’s border with Missouri – for round 4 months in 2016, in keeping with the Associated Press.

The state’s Department of Corrections mentioned on social media that he escaped from the North Central Unit jail in Calico Rock at round 15:40 (20:40 GMT) on Sunday, the place he had been incarcerated since 2017.

The division added that Hardin was not in his jail uniform, and was “carrying a makeshift outfit designed to imitate regulation enforcement” when he escaped.

Hardin, 56, stays at massive. The Department of Corrections urged anybody with data to “contact native regulation enforcement instantly”.

The division informed the BBC {that a} “multitude of companies” have been concerned within the search.

The Pea Ridge Police Department additionally issued an alert on social media, saying Hardin “has quite a few connections and household in our space”.

They warned the general public to not method him, saying he’s “thought of armed and harmful”.

The Izard Country Sheriff’s Office informed its group to “keep vigilant, lock your home and automobile doorways and report any suspicious exercise.”

The US Marshals Eastern Arkansas Fugitive Task Force can also be aiding with search efforts, a spokesperson mentioned on Tuesday.

The former prosecutor who helped put Hardin behind bars described him as a “sociopath”, native tv station KHBS 40/29 News reported.

“Prison’s not filled with people who find themselves all dangerous. It’s filled with lots of people who simply do dangerous issues. Grant’s totally different,” former Benton County prosecutor Nathan Smith informed the station.

Grant Hardin pleaded responsible to first-degree homicide – the intentional killing of one other particular person – after fatally taking pictures 59-year-old James Appleton in 2017. He was given a 30 12 months jail sentence.

Mr Appleton labored within the metropolis’s water division. He was shot and killed whereas talking to his brother-in-law, then-Gateway Mayor Andrew Tillman, on 23 February 2017, in keeping with the BBC’s US accomplice CBS News.

Police later discovered Mr Appleton’s physique inside a automotive.

While serving time for Mr Appleton’s homicide, DNA proof emerged linking Hardin to the lengthy unsolved rape of Amy Harrison at Frank Tillery Elementary School in Rogers, Arkansas, in November 1997.

According to an affiliate of CBS News, Ms Harrison was raped at gunpoint whereas she exited a classroom to go to the toilet.

Hardin pleaded responsible, and obtained a sentence of fifty years.

Before turning into Gateway’s police chief, Hardin served as an officer on the Eureka Springs Police Department (ESPD).

He resigned in October 1996 after he was knowledgeable by ESPD Chief Earl Hyatt that he was going to be fired for falsifying a police report, in keeping with the CBS News-affiliated 5News.

“I used to be going to terminate him, however he resigned, and he was caught mendacity on a police report,” Mr Hyatt reportedly mentioned.

Chief Hyatt additionally mentioned he was not stunned at Hardin’s conviction, telling 5News: “He was simply at all times a really violent, extreme particular person, and had a very dangerous mood.”

Cheryl Tillman, the mayor of Gateway, Arkansas, informed native information outlet KATV she was fearful Hardin would come after her and her household. Ms Tilman is the sister of Mr Appleton whom Hardin shot and killed.

“It’s type of scary,” Tillman mentioned. “I do not assume he’ll be taken alive.”

His escape from jail comes simply weeks after an unrelated incident during which 10 inmates broke out of a jail in New Orleans, Louisiana, after breaching the wall behind a rest room.