MACON, Ga. — After the news that four people escaped from the Bibb County Jail, many viewers had questions about the timeline, including some of the following from our Facebook comment section:
"Why did it take so long to release this info?"
"I'm just wondering why they waited 7 hours to tell anyone. They were long gone, probably in another state by the time BCSO sent out the press release."
"Why were they out of their cells at 3 a.m.? They need to look at employees. And why did it take so long to tell the public?"
13WMAZ reached out to the sheriff's department to verify the timeline; they sent back the following response:
"All those questions were answered at the press conference on yesterday."
Here is the timeline of events leading up to the escape, when the sheriff's department realized there was a jailbreak and when they notified the public.
Sometime late Sunday or early Monday, video shows a blue Dodge Challenger is seen in the area. Sheriff David Davis said it looked like they had been tampering with the fence. They brought items inside the fence, Davis said.
Around 3:30 a.m., video showed they escaped through a second-floor day room window. But officers inside the jail didn't learn that for hours.
Around 6 a.m., guards found a break in the fence. At that time, they started going back to figure out what happened.
"We had to backtrack to figure out when it was this escape happened, if we had an escape, when it happened. As soon as we knew internally that there was, our investigators were immediately notified. Our SRT team, the jail and sheriff's office leadership were notified. We were already following leads even at that early hour. So it was to make sure that we had all the information to get out the right information," Davis said.
Shortly after they determined there was an escape, Davis said investigators, deputies and the Special Response Team were out on the street looking for the inmates.
During this time, they also did a census of the jail to determine if anyone else had gotten out. But the public had still not been notified that anything was happening.
"We had an idea of who was missing fairly closely, but that is just jail protocol, " Davis said. "When you have an escape, you canvass the jail. But all while that is going on, our SRT team, investigators, and all those individuals out already looking because each one of these is charged with pretty serious crimes," Davis said. "It wasn't like we were sitting on our thumbs. We were working within our sheriff's office and investigative and in the jail. We wanted to make sure we had all of the information to give out, get the right information out. I would hate to say, 'Okay, but at one time, we only thought one had escaped.' Then, as we censused the jail and once we looked at the video that we had, we realized that we had four, then we had to verify which ones they were. But we were out on the street searching and following leads all during that time."
Around "9 or 10" a.m., the sheriff's office notified schools of the escape, Davis said in his news conference.
But Bibb Schools Campus Police received notification at about 10:30 a.m., according to district officials.
13WMAZ has reached out to other schools in the area to verify when they were alerted and has requested the call logs from the Bibb County Sheriff's Office to confirm what time those calls went out.
At 11:20 a.m., a Bibb County Sheriff's Office press release informs news outlets of the escape.
And at 3:30 p.m. Sheriff Davis held a news conference to update reporters on the latest news and outline what happened. He provided two additional hotlines for people to call and offered a $1,000 reward. He discussed the timeline of events and other information.
During the news conference, Davis addressed the delay in when they notified the media and when they found out about the inmates escaping from the jail.
“We want to let y’all know as fast as we can. As soon as we found the hole in the gate, we should have called the media and said ‘We found a hole in the gate.’ Then y’all are going to want to know 'Did someone escape?' Well, we don’t know, hold on,” Davis said. “We had to get all of our information together so that we had a complete picture of what happened so that we let you know. I know that we like to get it out while at the same time, our investigators were already on the street, our SRT team and you never know, we might have caught a break and caught one or two of them or all of them in that interim time. But indications are they have gone away.”
Some additional questions that were posed during the press conference:
What was the jail staffing on early Monday?
Davis said there were fewer than 10 officers in the jail to guard 800 inmates. He said ideal staffing is around 30 officers, but that hasn't happened in a long time.
Weren't jail guards counting heads overnight?
Davis said they count inmates at each shift change, but the 3:30 a.m. escape happened between head counts.
How did inmates get into the second-floor day room?
The sheriff said the room is often locked, but sometimes it is not locked overnight.
Two weeks ago, someone cut through gates outside the jail and put a contraband cell phone into a day room vent. Is that connected to the break-in?
Davis says they are looking into it; he says the break was not at the spot where the inmates escaped but was nearby.
Will any jail guards be disciplined due to the escape?
Davis says they're looking into that, and Internal Affairs is investigating the escape. He says an officer should have noticed an intruder tampering with the fence, and there's an indication someone did.
How could jail inmates coordinate an escape with the outside?
The sheriff says he is not naive and knows cell phones are in his jail. But he says there are illegal cell phones in every jail and prison in Georgia.