Authorities: Inmate uses mop to escape from Wake Correctional Center
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- An inmate was briefly on the run overnight after escaping from the Wake Correctional Center on Rock Quarry Road in Raleigh.
Authorities said they believed 38-year-old Keith Bradley, who was assigned to work as a night janitor at the prison, used a mop to go over a fence and escape just after midnight Thursday.
Bradley was captured around 2:30 a.m. at his girlfriend's apartment in Raleigh. He was a minimum-custody inmate serving a sentence of about 2 years for possession of a firearm by a felon and several drug-related convictions.
Investigators said they knew to look for Bradley at his girlfriend's house.
"We knew that she was a local contact that he had, and we were watching that location, police were watching." said Keith Acree with the Department of Public Safety. "He was spotted there in the area before he was actually captured."
Authorities are investigating how Bradley got to his girlfriend's apartment, which was more than 10 miles across town, off of Six Forks Road.
Investigators told ABC11 a K-9 found Bradley hiding underneath a deck. Bradley is expected to be charged with felony escape, which could push his release date back several months.
"We'll go back and review to determine one, were all our existing policies followed? Did all of our staff do what they were supposed to do? And if there was anything that happened that wasn't supposed to happen, we'll deal with that," Acree explained.
Bradley is currently being held in Central Prison and likely will not be returning to Wake Correctional - which is a facility of about 400 inmates who are near their release date - according to a spokesperson with the Department of Public Safety.
DPS told ABC11 that it will review policies and procedures to determine how they can prevent something like this from happening again.
