The Aburn Escape

Here's an account of the 'Auburn Escape' from The Post Standard, a Syracuse Paper:

Inmate attempts escape in Cicero
Prisoner from Auburn lockup jumps from transport van, flees guards in parking lot.
Friday, July 28, 2006
By Brian Mannion Staff writer
State corrections officers shot at, and missed, a prisoner as he escaped from a transport van Thursday in a parking lot in Cicero, the Onondaga County sheriff said.
Kevin Fitzpatrick, 32, serving time in Auburn Correctional Facility for a previous escape conviction, was being taken back to Auburn after answering parole violation charges in Jefferson County, Sheriff Kevin Walsh said. Walsh said Fitzpatrick escaped from the van about 4 p.m. in a parking lot near Best-Way Professional Beauty Supply, 7821 Route 11.
Deputies captured him a few minutes later in a parking lot across Route 481 from where he had escaped, Walsh said.
On the scene, Walsh gave this account:
Fitzpatrick told guards, whom authorities have not identified, that he had to go to the bathroom. Fitzpatrick had been placed in the van in shackles, a waist chain and handcuffs, but he somehow freed himself from his leg irons in the van. When the guards stopped and opened the rear door in the parking lot on Route 11, Fitzpatrick jumped out and ran west behind the beauty supply shop.
Guards called for help. Then, while Fitzpatrick was running along the side of the shop, a guard shot at him.
"They were trying to catch him," Walsh said. "He was much more young and agile than they are."
Walsh said guards may, under state law, shoot at a prisoner who is trying to escape. Walsh also said the guard who fired the shots didn't endanger bystanders because he fired into a vacant wooded area behind the beauty shop, not in the direction of anyone except the prisoner.
Deputies found Fitzpatrick about an eighth of a mile from the escape site, the sheriff said. He was sitting on a concrete slab in the open in the front lot of a landscaping business at 5607 Business Ave. and was captured without a struggle, Walsh said.
Fitzpatrick was treated for an asthmatic condition at the site, then taken into custody.
He was wearing his waist chain when deputies found him but had somehow worked his way out of his handcuffs too, Walsh said.
State troopers, deputies and Cicero and North Syracuse police responded. The sheriff's office and the state inspector general and Department of Correctional Services are investigating the incident, Walsh said.
Lori Fiumara, of Clay, was driving by the beauty shop on Route 11 when she saw the guards jump out of the van and shout at a running man wearing a green inmate uniform, she said.
"I saw one of them pull his gun," Fiumara said, re-enacting the way the guard took a shooting stance, "and fire two shots."