One of the two men still on the run after a dramatic prison escape in New Orleans last month has stirred up fresh controversy after videos surfaced online showing someone who looks and sounds a lot like him claiming he didn’t escape, he was let out.
In two 10-minute clips posted to Instagram, the man, who appears to be Antoine Massey and sports matching face tattoos, calmly speaks to the camera from a kitchen stool, insisting he didn’t flee the prison. “They say that I broke out. I didn’t break out. I was let out,” he says in the video, as reported by The Times-Picayune.
He goes on to claim that he was facing a life sentence for crimes he says he never committed and insists his only reason for leaving was to escape what he believes was a miscarriage of justice. “The reason why I left the jail is because these people were trying to give me a life sentence in both parishes for something that I did not do,” he adds. The videos have since been taken down, but not before they caught the attention of authorities.
Local law enforcement is now looking into the videos and trying to confirm whether the man in them is Massey. Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson isn’t taking any chances. In a statement, she said, “If the individual depicted in the video is indeed Antoine Massey, we strongly urge him to come forward and turn himself in to the proper authorities. Cooperating with law enforcement is in his best interest and may help avoid additional charges.”
Hutson, who put her re-election campaign on pause last month amid growing criticism, said her office is working alongside state and federal agencies to track down Massey and the second fugitive, Derrick Groves.
Massey, 32, was facing charges of rape and kidnapping before his escape. Groves, 27, had already been convicted of murder, according to The Associated Press. The pair are the last two men still missing out of a group of 10 who pulled off the jailbreak in the early hours of 16 May.
Authorities say the escape involved removing a toilet from a jail cell and climbing through a hole left in the wall. The men then scaled a chain-link fence and crossed a nearby highway before splitting up and vanishing into the city. In a cheeky parting shot, they even scrawled a message for guards above the escape route: “To[o] easy Lol.”
The escape has already led to a string of arrests. At least 15 people have been charged for allegedly helping the escapees either during the breakout or after. Among them is jail maintenance worker Sterling Williams, who’s accused of switching off the water supply to the cell, giving the men the chance to break through.
Williams has denied knowingly assisting in the escape, claiming he only shut off the water because he’d been threatened. Massey, in his Instagram rant, denied threatening anyone and instead accused prison officials of corruption and racism. He even made a bizarre plea for help to Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, and several music artists, according to local outlet WVUE.