A 34-years old inmate who fled incarceration in Neal Unit Amarillo, Harris County, on Monday has been apprehended by the police only a few hours after his escape.
According to local sources, Marvin Garcia was spotted by a volunteer in an aircraft along a freight train track north of the city.
The prisoner, who is remanded for murder, is reported to have escaped detention on Monday morning by scaling a fence. The spokesman for Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Jason Clark, who disclosed this information to the media, also revealed that Garcia had been shot by an officer who spotted him making his getaway sometime around 3:40 am. It is currently unclear if the prisoner has any gunshot wounds or was aided in his daring escape.
Reports indicate that he did not attempt to resist arrest by the police after he was cornered near the Canadian River. Garcia was retaken into custody at about 11:30 am - about 9 hours after he fled Neal Unit.
Garcia was incarcerated in 2010 for murder and has served only 4 out of his 25 years sentence. Officials say the inmate will be charged and is likely to have his sentence extended.
More than 30 law enforcement officers and many other volunteers participated in the manhunt for the suspect. Local sources say some schools in Amarillo and Highland Park were put on lock down and those that remained open had officers on their premises.
Clark, the Criminal Justice Department spokesman for Texas, has revealed that the department will review the incident to identify the loopholes that aided the criminal's escape.
"...we're going to go back and look at all the specifics to determine how it happened," he said.
The Neal Unit Prison was opened in 1994 and holds up to 1,732 inmates. Over the past decade, authorities in this facility have been accused of laxity in enforcing disciplinary codes. Reports indicate that Neal Unit is one of the detention centers in the state where guards are found to permit prisoners to illegally access cell phones. A few years ago a prisoner escaped from a nearby prison with the help of an accomplice he liaised with through a cell phone. But, like Garcia, he was recapturedshortly afterwards.
