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Skylar Meade, top left and top and bottom center, and Nicholas Umphenour, bottom left, face charges in an escape from a hospital in Idaho. (Photos from Boise police)
A white supremacist prison gang member and his suspected accomplice accused of helping him escape from a hospital in Idaho in an attack that wounded three corrections officers are suspected of killing two people during their 36 hours on the run from law enforcement, authorities said.
Skylar Meade, 31, a state prison inmate, and his accomplice Nicholas Umphenour, 28, were arrested on Thursday afternoon in Twin Falls after a short police pursuit, according to police.
The ordeal started at 2:15 a.m. when Idaho Department of Corrections officers transported Meade to Saint Alphonsus for medical treatment, officials said. Meade had been transferred to the hospital after he had injured himself in prison, state prison officials said in a news conference.
As Meade was being taken back to the state lockup, his suspected accomplice fired at the officers, hitting two of them, officials said. A Boise police officer, who responded to the hospital on a report of an active shooter, fired his weapon at an armed person, who was later determined to be a state corrections worker. That worker was not seriously injured. A second officer was in critical but stable condition. A third suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries, officials said.
The suspects fled in a Honda Civic when the police arrived.
Police suspect the two men in two homicides while on the run and believe they are linked by a shackle found at the scene of one of the homicides, KTVB reported. Details about the cases were not immediately revealed.
Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar called the case a brazen, violent, and coordinated attack on Idaho Department of Corrections personnel carried out in front of the hospital’s emergency department. The two men possibly had planned it when they were in prison together, the news outlet reported.
Winegar was thankful nobody was killed in the hospital attack.
“I am grateful this harrowing incident did not result in loss of life, and we are monitoring the wounded IDOC officers with great hope for a full and speedy recovery of all involved,” he said.
Meade has been incarcerated since October 2016, serving prison time for aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer with a firearm enhancement, officials said. His most recent sentence was set to end in October 2036, authorities said.
He has convictions for felony possession of a controlled substance, grand theft, and introduction of contraband into a correctional facility, officials said.
