Law enforcement officials worked throughout the night Thursday and all day Friday searching for an inmate who tricked jailers into mistakenly discharging him from the Clark County Jail. Michael Diontae Johnson is still missing.
Johnson, 30, was serving a 24-year sentence for kidnapping and aggravated assault in Arizona but had been transferred to Clark County to stand trial on a local domestic violence case.
Johnson reportedly swapped identities with another inmate who was scheduled to be released Thursday and walked out of the jail about 8:30 a.m., according to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. Jail staff noticed Johnson missing during a scheduled meal and head count a few hours later. Law enforcement have been searching for him since.
Undersheriff Mike Cooke said he didn’t want to disclose how and where deputies were searching, but said that the hunt is active and ongoing.
Johnson, who had lived in Portland, is black, 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighs 140 pounds and has black hair and brown eyes.
“We fully intend to arrest and prosecute anybody who assists Mr. Johnson in the escape and in harboring him,” Cooke said.
He added that the sheriff’s office is concerned about their liability with Johnson on the loose, but said citizens shouldn’t be concerned.
“There’s no threat to the public that we’re aware of from him specifically, just the increased level of concern that he’s a fugitive that very much desires not to get caught,” Cooke said. “Of course we worry about the risk of the law enforcement officers who take him back into custody.”
Cooke said that the man who exchanged identities with Johnson looks very similar to the escapee.
“They look similar enough that I could see somebody mistaking one for the other,” Cooke said.
That inmate, whose name was not disclosed, was not released as originally scheduled, the sheriff’s office said. Cooke said it was too early to tell if that inmate will face charges.
Jail chief Ric Bishop said in a press release that the jail is about six weeks away from implementing a biometric screening tool that would have prevented this type of escape. After installation, the system will collect inmates’ fingerprints as they’re booked into the jail, then will match those fingerprints before the inmates are released.
“It’s unfortunate that this happened before the biometrics technology came into play,” Cooke said. “The point of it is to reduce the human factor in determining a person’s identity prior to release.”
This isn’t Johnson’s first escape. In 2008, Johnson was imprisoned at the Olympic Corrections Center for less than a week on drug violations and firearms possession convictions when he was found to be missing from his living quarters.
In that instance, two people picked Johnson up and drove him to Vancouver, though police received information that he had then taken a bus to Nevada. He was arrested days later at a bus station in Reno.
The Clark County case stems from an incident in March 2014 when Johnson allegedly made threats and assaulted a woman in a domestic violence incident, according to court records.
Johnson posted bail in that case, but then did not show up to court and was arrested later in the year in Arizona for kidnapping and aggravated assault, for which he was convicted, according to court records.
In the Clark County case, he is accused of bail jumping, two counts of harassment-death threats, intimidating a witness and fourth-degree assault, all domestic violence crimes. He is scheduled to go to trial in June.
Cooke said that while the search for Johnson continues, the sheriff’s office is also reviewing its own policies and procedures to determine exactly how the identity swapping took place.
“We’re just going to keep going forward with our efforts to locate him and learn what we can from it,” Cooke said.
