The last of 10 inmates who had been on the lam following a New Orleans jailbreak in May has been captured, police said Wednesday.
Derrick Groves, 28, was apprehended following a “brief stand-off” in Atlanta, Louisiana State Police said.
The capture involved a “coordinated effort” that included the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Louisiana State Police, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, the New Orleans Police Department, the Atlanta Police Department, Crimestoppers Greater New Orleans and other agencies, police said.
Derrick Groves.
Louisiana State Police
Tips to Crimestoppers led authorities to the house in southwest Atlanta on Wednesday morning, according to the U.S. Marshals New Orleans Task Force. Agents pumped gas multiple times into the residence and, after two to three hours, arrested Groves in a crawl space that he had created in the home, according to the task force. He had minor scrapes, but otherwise no one was injured, authorities said.
Groves is one of 10 inmates who authorities said brazenly escaped from the Orleans Justice Center in the early morning hours of May 16 after climbing through a hole behind a toilet. Their disappearance was not noticed for several hours and touched off a massive manhunt.
Groves was convicted last year of two counts of second-degree murder in a 2018 Mardi Gras Day shooting and faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, prosecutors said. Unrelated to that case, he also subsequently pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter, online court records show.
The cell at Orleans Justice Center in New Orleans where inmates apparently escaped from.
Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office
“Groves’ escape represented a serious breach of public safety and a historic failure of custodial security,” Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams said in a statement on Wednesday. “His capture brings long-awaited calm to victims, their families, the witnesses who testified, the assistant district attorneys who prosecuted him and the people of New Orleans who were rightly concerned that a convicted violent offender had escaped so easily and evaded justice for so long.”
Williams added his office will “pursue every available legal avenue to ensure that Derrick Groves answers for every crime he has committed and every consequence he has sought to avoid.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill also said Wednesday that Groves now faces charges “for his role in the escape and I will ensure that he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Louisiana State Police said the 10th and final inmate who escaped from the Orleans Justice Center is now in custody.
Louisiana State Police
Williams said authorities will investigate to see who may have helped Groves get to Atlanta.
“He obviously had some help, and there will be a thorough investigation into any and everybody that helped him along the way, in whatever parish and whatever county that assistance came,” Williams said during a press briefing Wednesday.
Groves’ apparent girlfriend, Darriana Burton, was arrested in June for allegedly helping Groves escape, authorities said. She allegedly had an “active involvement in the planning phase of the escape,” according to the affidavit for her arrest warrant, including relaying “escape-related information” and coordinating communications between Groves and people outside the jail.
Burton is one of over a dozen people who have been arrested on suspicion of helping the escapees, including another inmate in the jail and a jail maintenance worker who is accused of shutting off water to the toilet allowing escapees to remove it.
Three of the 10 inmates who escaped were apprehended in New Orleans within the first 24 hours of the jailbreak. Others were captured in the following days, including in Baton Rouge and Texas.
The ninth inmate, Antoine Massey, was located in New Orleans in late June after the sheriff’s office said it received a tip. Louisiana authorities were investigating a video circulating online earlier that month that appeared to show Massey pleading to rappers and President Donald Trump to help him while he was still on the run.
ABC News’ Faith Abubey and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
