![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 8News investigative reporter Kerri O’Brien has been highlighting some of those issues in reports over the past two years: “Generally, it takes something to happen before we see our shortcomings,” Baylor added.īaylor has been vocal about his concerns recently in regards to the state’s correctional centers. They also installed cameras and started introducing new officers to the entire staff. “Mecklenburg was supposed to be escape-proof” - Don Baylor, head of the National Coalition of Public Safety Officers “Mecklenburg was supposed to be escape-proof,” said Don Baylor, who serves as the head of the National Coalition of Public Safety Officers, a union representing prison officers. “They corrected things after that.”Īmong the changes: Keeping death row inmates confined to their cells most of the day, limiting how many guards had access to keys and blocking off stairwells where inmates were able to hide during the escape. They say the investigation in the days, weeks and months after the escape led to immediate security changes to try and prevent another breakout. Officers Hawkins and Thomas also went through days of questioning, but both kept their jobs and both ultimately retired from the State Department of Corrections. I’m blessed and here to see them.” - Coraleen Epps “I’m very blessed. As a result, I now have five children and six grandchildren. “My survivor instincts kicked in when they told me what to do. That’s what I did. “I couldn’t overpower them, to get them out of the control room, I did what I was supposed to do,” Epps said. They put me on a lie detector test and tried to say I was part of the escape and I had failed the polygraph and let me go.”įive officers lost their jobs. Epps was among them, although she says she wouldn’t have come back to work at the prison even if she could have she doesn’t regret her actions that day. “I felt very unappreciated because I didn’t give up my life, I was being blamed,” she recalled. WATCH: Mecklenburg 6 State of Fear: 35 years later, corrections officers still haunted by death row breakoutĮpps said the way she was treated in the days following the escape made her feel ‘worthless.’ The officers also felt pressure and scrutiny from some of their peers who blamed them for the escape. I have not slept the whole night since 1984. “My wife told me, I would wake up in my sleep, grabbing my neck, talking in my sleep,” Thomas said. But even 35 years later, that day still haunts them. None of the correctional officers were seriously hurt during the escape. Very agitated, yelling, screaming at my daughter.” “I had to go on anxiety pills,” Epps recalled. “I wasn’t able to sleep. It would end the state of fear in the region, but it wasn’t the end for the officers who had been taken hostage. The Briley brothers would last 20 days before they were captured, hiding out in a garage in Philadelphia, not far from their uncle’s home. “Every time you hear a door creak, you just don’t know.”A week later, two more of the inmates were arrested in Vermont on their way to the Canadian border. “You’re looking behind every bush,” says Hawkins. He says it was like nothing he’s ever seen. Donald Baylor was among the hundreds of officers from other prisons who were brought in to search for the escapees. ![]()
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