Arabic version: مسؤولون: سجين في تينيسي يهرب عبر سياج

According to The Guardian, Tennessee authorities were still searching on Tuesday for Jacob Morley, a 28-year-old convicted murderer who investigators say escaped from the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville by slipping through a fence and fleeing in a stolen truck.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said officials discovered Morley was unaccounted for at about 11.30pm on Sunday. Security-camera footage showed him escaping through a fence while wearing his prison uniform, officials said, though they did not disclose how he got through it.

Surveillance video reportedly showed Morley stealing a truck at about 1am on Monday. Footage also recorded him passing the Hornbeak fire department, about 15 miles from the prison, at about 1.18am, the department said. Officials offered a reward of up to $2,500 for his arrest and said law enforcement searched buildings and other structures near the prison.

Morley is 5ft 11in and 240lb, with brown hair and green eyes. He was sentenced to life in prison for the 2022 killing of his co-worker, Cody Birchfield, whose body was found in a box beneath Morley’s Carter county home after Birchfield had been missing for several weeks. Morley was also convicted of aggravated burglary, tampering with evidence, vandalism and evading arrest.

The prison, about 90 miles north of Memphis in a rural area near the Mississippi River and Missouri, can house 1,776 men and minors convicted as adults. A 2023 audit found that the Tennessee Department of Correction had a 61% correctional-officer vacancy rate at the complex during that fiscal year.