Inmate who fled jail while taking out the trash is captured in Sierra foothills
A helicopter with thermal imaging tracked him as searchers closed in.
An inmate who escaped a jail in the Sierra Nevada foothills while he was taking out the trash was captured 12 days later in a nearby community.
Larry Albert McDonald Jr., 41, had climbed a razor-wire fence behind the Calaveras County Jail in San Andreas around 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 2, while he was on supervised work duty. He sprinted across a field and disappeared.
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, searchers from the Calaveras County Sheriff’s Office and a U.S. marshals task force homed in on a trailer in Valley Springs, 10 miles west of the jail. As they approached it around 3 p.m., a man thought to be the fugitive ran from the trailer into a wooded area.
A perimeter was set up around an area of about a square mile, and a helicopter from the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office was called in.
Around 6:30 p.m., the helicopter’s thermal imaging equipment picked up a possible heat signature of a person. Ground units moved in and tightened the perimeter as the helicopter crew updated them on the fugitive’s presumed location. At 7:07 p.m., McDonald was taken into custody.
He was returned to the jail, where he had been in custody for felony possession of a dagger as well as two misdemeanors. He now faces additional charges for the escape and for felonies detailed in San Joaquin County warrants that were turned up while he was on the run: lewd or lascivious acts with a child, aggravated assault with a firearm and illegal possession of a firearm.