PALMER — Alaska State Troopers say a 44-year-old convicted felon escaped from the recreation yard at the Mat-Su Pre-Trial Facility this morning. Troopers consider him to be dangerous.
Troopers are withholding the man's name, “due to the investigative process,” but say he is a white man, 6-foot-1 and weighs 220 pounds. He was last seen wearing a yellow jumpsuit or a yellow shirt with a pink undershirt and gray pants.
Troopers say the man is either bald or has very short red hair and tattoos on both his arms. The tattoo on his left arm is a tribal tattoo. His right arm is “covered with tattoos of flowers and faces.”
They say he left the yard at 8:05 a.m.
Traffic on emergency band channels this morning gives the impression that troopers are working with Palmer police and other law enforcement in the area to track down the man. Radio traffic indicated multiple officers were tracking down leads all over the city on foot and in patrol cars.
Mat-Su Borough schools have locked their doors and are keeping students inside after troopers informed school district officials of the escape.
“All of our schools are operating in a stay-put mode,” said school district spokeswoman Catherine Esary. “Our exterior entrances and exits are remaining locked.”
She said that classes are continuing as normal but for now everyone is staying inside the building. That decision obviously affects things like field trips but, Esary said, that doesn't mean activities are necessarily canceled. Law enforcement is looking to apprehend the suspect and if that happens over the course of the day, the district will decide what to do about those kinds of activities.
“Those kinds of decisions might be affected by what happens in the next hour,” Esary said. “Primarily for the time being parents just need to know that their children are safe.”
Palmer Police deferred questions about the investigation to the troopers who are running the operation.
Palmer's director of emergency services Jon Owen said that the police department is doing everything it can to help.
“Every hand is on deck helping out AST with this,” Owen said.
He personally was working through a list of city organizations that the department feels should be notified about the escape.
“Airport businesses are being notified and we're trying to make other notifications as you and I speak,” Owen said.
Department of Corrections spokesman Richard Schmitz said he was coordinating with troopers and did not have any information immediately available just before 10 a.m.
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