Prisoner flees from hospital emergency room

By CONNIE JO DISCOE

McCook Daily Gazette

McCook police and Red Willow County sheriff's officers Tuesday morning apprehended an inmate who slipped away from the McCook hospital reportedly wearing nothing more than her bra and underpants.

Hitchcock County Sheriff D. Bryan Leggott said this morning that the 34-year-old female inmate had been transferred by the Trenton ambulance to Community Hospital of McCook for medical treatment when she asked to use the restroom and walked out of the hospital.

McCook police and sheriff's officers were called in to search for the woman, believed to have run into a cornfield north of the hospital. The weather shortly before noon Tuesday -- rain and fog and only 49 degrees -- became a major concern as officers were uncertain whether the woman wore more than her underwear.

Her ex-husband, who had come to the hospital, carried the prison-orange jumpsuit she wore from the jail and said she was wearing only her underclothes.

McCook Police Chief Ike Brown said that at 12:02 p.m., police were called to a report of a break-in at a home on Country Club Drive, west of the hospital and across the Broken T golf course, which lays between Country Club and the hospital.

Brown said police alerted area residents, and someone reported seeing a woman running in the 900 block of East Fifth, two blocks west of Country Club Drive.

Shortly thereafter, another citizen advised officers of a woman running near the 800 block of East Fourth, Brown said. "She ran on him (the officer)," Brown said. "After a pretty good foot race through some yards, he was able to apprehend her," in the front yard of a home near the corner of East Fourth and H.

Brown said a McCook ambulance transported the woman -- then wearing what looked like a light-pink bathrobe -- to Community Hospital where she was treated for a minor cut on her hand officers believe happened during the commission of the break-in on Country Club Drive.

Brown said he anticipates charging the woman with burglary and escaping from custody once issues in Hitchcock County are resolved.

Sheriff Leggott said this morning that the woman was treated at Community Hospital and transferred by Hitchcock County sheriff's officers to Richard Young Hospital in Kearney.

The woman, whose name Leggott did not release, was in jail in Trenton on probation violations in Hitchcock and Chase counties.

Brown said officers greatly appreciated the assistance of citizens in providing information about the whereabouts of the suspect. "This led to our taking her into custody safely," Brown said.

Brown added, "As always, when we get into difficult and complex situations, the city and the county resolves the situation together. Officers did an excellent job of safely apprehending the suspect without injury to officers or citizens."