Tuesday, December 27, 2005

(CNN) -- Two men remained at large Saturday night, a day after escaping from the Yakima County Jail in Washington state, authorities said.Police said Luis Soto had plans to obtain handguns after the escape and Gianno Alaimo was not a man who would surrender. The two are the last remaining fugitives from a nine-man prison break. Five escapees were captured before they got outside the prison grounds, officers said.Two of the four men who escaped the prison compound, Terry Moser and Santos Luera, were captured after police received a tip Saturday that the were hiding in the attic of Luera's sister's home in downtown Yakima. They were quickly apprehended, said Yakima Police Chief Sam Granato. (Watch as the sheriff talks about the capture -- 3:20)The men escaped using a 40-foot rope fashioned from bedsheets, said Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin. It appears the men had help from other inmates in their cell block, who "supplied blankets, et cetera," Irwin said without elaborating.Authorities released photos showing a hole in the ceiling of a cell through which the men apparently escaped. Irwin would not answer questions about the hole. "We know they were all working together," Granato told CNN. He said Moser and Luera "were the planners of the escape, Moser in particular. He assisted with another escape a few years ago."Moser and Luera were considered the most dangerous escapees, Granato said; Luera, 20, was imprisoned for second-degree murder and Moser for second-degree assault.The two were apprehended without incident. Luera was transported to a local hospital with a broken ankle, Irwin said. The other two escapees, Alaimo -- charged with second-degree assault -- and Soto -- charged with burglary -- also are considered dangerous, Granato said."We have specific information that Soto had plans to obtain two handguns south of here, and he was spotted there around 7:30 p.m. last night," the police chief said. "Alaimo has been known to carry guns in the past. ... He will not surrender willingly."Someone was waiting for the inmates on the outside when they escaped, Granato said, and that person may be driving Alaimo and Soto away from Yakima. "That's what we're trying to nail down right now what kind of vehicle they may be in," Granato said after Luera and Moser were captured.Yakima County Corrections officers learned of the escape as it was in progress, about 5 p.m. Friday. Nine men escaped, but five of them were captured on jail grounds. "It was a pretty quick and dirty job, a little bit easier than it should've been," Irwin said.The Yakima Herald-Republic reported on its Web site that Friday's escape was strikingly similar to a June 1994 jail break in which inmates accessed the jailhouse roof and used a rope made of bedsheets to get down to the ground.

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