A former small town police chief escaped on Sunday from an Arkansas prison where he was serving decades for rape and murder.
Grant Hardin, 56, escaped from the North Central Unit in Calico Rock Sunday afternoon, the Stone County Sheriff’s Office said.
Hardin had been incarcerated since 2017, sentenced to 30 years for first-degree murder. He managed to escape by wearing a uniform resembling that of the corrections department, according to the authorities.
As reported by KNWA, Hardin shot a Gateway water employee in the back of the head in February 2017, and he confessed to the crime eight months later. In February 2018, it was discovered that Hardin’s DNA was linked to the 1997 unsolved rape of a teacher from Frank Tillery Elementary School, which occurred on a Sunday morning while she was preparing her lessons for the upcoming week.
She left her classroom to use the bathroom and encountered Hardin, armed with a gun, who raped her in the bathroom and again back in the classroom.
He pleaded guilty to the rape after the DNA match and was sentenced to 50 years in prison, the Associated Press said.
Hardin worked as the police chief of Gateway for approximately four months in early 2016. According to NewsNation, he was previously a police officer in Eureka Springs in the mid-1990s, but he resigned after being informed of his imminent dismissal for allegedly falsifying a police report. He also held roles as a Benton County constable between 2009-2010 and 2013-2014, and as a corrections officer in Fayetteville.
