Two Felons Escape from Sheridan Jail; Caught in Texarkana

There shouldn`t be an easy way to break out of a jail -- but in Arkansas one scheme is becoming an alarmingly regular occurence. Saturday night two inmates in Sheridan Detention Center asked a guard to turn on the lights so they could take showers -- 45 minutes later, they were literally through the roof. "Another inmate in that pod hit the buzzer and asked him, `Where`s my two roommates?`" Captain Bob Williamson of the Sheridan Police Department said. In the cell bedrooms, the ceilings are reinforced with metal and concrete -- but out here, the ceilings are made of weaker sheetrock. The inmates took advantage of the privacy of the showers, and the fact that the ceilings are lower in the showers, to make their escape. Two inmates pulled the same stunt in Sheridan in February of this year and the scheme is disturbingly similar to a couple of escapes from Van Buren County Jail last year. Saturday night, felons Jason Qualls and Matthew Dunaway punched through the sheetrock and climbed into the ceiling, pushed their way through the roof -- and then stole a city-owned vehicle. "We got contacted by the Wal-Mart store in Malvern -- telling us they had found our truck over there and one of their employee`s trucks was stolen," Williamson said. From there the two fugitives made it all the way to Texarkana, and actually crossed the Texas border, when authorities there pulled them over after a brief car chase, and took them in. After the first escape, the jail did switch to 24-hour supervision. After 10:30 at night, inmates are also locked in the sleeping compartments, where the ceiling is reinforced.