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Jail inmate charged with escape

Shackled man ran down courthouse stairs, into corrections deputies

By Paris Achen
Published: January 16, 2015, 4:00pm

A Clark County Jail inmate faces another charge after he allegedly slipped away from a corrections deputy last week and ran down four floors of the county courthouse stairs while still wearing arm and leg shackles.

Eric Leroy Tyler, 29, of La Center was apprehended when he turned a corner in the courthouse’s main lobby and collided with two corrections deputies who were walking up the staircase from the bottom floor, said eyewitness John Mihalyo, a volunteer at the courthouse information desk.

“They were bouncing off each other like bouncy balls,” Mihalyo said.

The two corrections deputies, Adam Hackett and Randy Robison, wrestled with Tyler in the lobby in front of court visitors and staff until they were able to subdue him, according to court papers.

Mihalyo said one woman in the lobby started hyperventilating.

In the court clerk’s office, adjacent to the lobby, clerk Felicia Corona witnessed some of the action.

“I saw a couple of sheriff’s deputies tackle him, and he kind of ran off,” Corona said. “Then, they pinned him down. I couldn’t see them on the floor. I just heard gurgling.”

Corona has worked in the clerk’s office for two years, and said that was the first time she ever saw a jail escapee loose in the courthouse.

“I was freaked out,” she said.

Tyler appeared Friday in Superior Court on suspicion of first-degree escape in connection with the Jan. 9 incident. Judge Scott Collier ordered him held without bail and appointed Vancouver attorney Mary Arden to defend him. Arden already represents Tyler on several other charges. He is scheduled to be arraigned Friday on the escape charge.

According to court documents, Tyler, who was in a fifth-floor courtroom, asked corrections Deputy Ann Sinnema to take him to the restroom. Sinnema planned to escort him back to the jail to use the restroom, wrote Clark County sheriff’s Deputy Mike Polen in a probable cause affidavit.

As Sinnema was unlocking a door to the courthouse’s inmate elevator lobby, Tyler made a run for it down the fire stairs, Polen wrote. Sinnema pursued but lost sight of him on the third floor. However, she heard him exit the fire stairwell into the second-floor lobby, one floor above the main lobby. When she arrived in the main lobby, she saw Tyler scuffling with deputies Hackett and Robison, Polen wrote.

At some point, Tyler was able to release his hand shackles, though it is unclear how he did it, according to Polen. The deputy said that Tyler declined to answer questions about the incident.

“The first thing I noticed was, he came around the corner coming down the stairs,” Mihalyo said. “Something happened, and he fell right on his face on the floor. He got up and started to run toward the stairwell going down. Just at that moment, two deputies were going up the stairs, and at the top of the stairs, they all ran into each other and bounced off.”

Mihalyo said all three men fell onto the floor, and Tyler attempted to crawl away.

“The deputies wrestled him with various pretzel holds,” Mihalyo said.

“The funny part about it was, in the jury room (adjacent to the main lobby), there was a retirement party going on for Judge (John) Nichols,” he said. “There were 50 to 100 people cracking jokes and passing out presents. Meanwhile, all that chaos was going on here in the lobby.”

Tyler, who has an extensive criminal history, was in jail on suspicion of various pending charges and was being processed through the county’s therapeutic Drug Court program. His other pending charges include theft of a motor vehicle, residential burglary, obstructing a public servant, theft, identity theft and bail jumping, according to court papers.

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