HILLSBORO, W.Va. — State Corrections officials are working to determine how a pair of inmates at the Denmar Correctional Center in Pocahontas County managed to slip away undetected early Sunday morning.
“It appears they could have been gone for up to maybe three hours,” said State Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein. “It could have been less.”
Denmar is a medium security lockup in the remote mountains of Pocahontas County. The former state hospital is converted into a prison. Inmates Larry Morehead and Thomas Pennington appeared to have slipped out one of the building’s windows.
“We’re trying to determine for certain, but it appears it was a bathroom area,” said Rubenstein.
Neither of the inmates, who were serving time for violent crimes, appeared to have anything in their prison record which would have negated their being housed in a medium security lockup. Morehead was convicted of sexual assault. Pennington was serving time for arson and murder.
After the two made their way out the window, they used a piece of metal apparently fabricated with two strings to hold down the top of a razor wire fence on the facility’s perimeter.
“They had some kind of object to try to hold that razor wire down to not be cut,” Rubenstein said. “We did notice there was some blood at the scene.”
The extent of their injuries wasn’t immediately known when the pair was captured in Nicholas County near the community of Fenwick Monday morning.
Denmar holds 216 male inmates and the sleeping quarters are on the building’s second and third floors. Rubenstein said at the time of their escape it’s likely the prison had two guards on each floor and another corrections officer in the control room watching the outside via surveillance video cameras.
Rubenstein said the two were discovered missing after an official bed check, but investigators are still trying to map out the timeline between when the pair was last known to be incarcerated and made their escape.