Hunt ex-police chef who escaped the prison of Arkansas

The search for a former police chief of Arkansas, convicted of rape and murder, takes place after he escaped from prison on Sunday.

Grant Hardin was head of the police in Gateway, Arkansas – a small town of a few hundred inhabitants on the border of the state with Missouri – for about four months in 2016, according to the Associated Press.

The State Department of Corrections said on social media that he escaped from the prison of North Central Unit in Calico Rock on Sunday around 3:40 PM (20:40 GMT), where he had been locked up since 2017.

The department added that Hardin was no longer in his prison uniform and “wore an improvised outfit that was designed to simulate the police” when he escaped.

Hardin, 56, remains in general. The Department of Corrections insisted on everyone with information to “contact the local law enforcement immediately”.

The department told the BBC that a “multitude of agencies” was involved in the search.

The Pea Ridge Police Department has also published a warning on social media and said that Hardin has “countless connections and family in our area”.

They warned the public not to approach him and say that he is “considered armed and dangerous”.

The former public prosecutor who helped Hardin behind bars, described him as a “sociopath,” KHBS 40/29 News reported.

“The prison is not full of people who are all bad. It’s full of many people who just do bad things. Grant is different,” said former public prosecutor Nathan Smith van Benton County at the station.

Grant Hardin pleaded guilty of murder of the first degree intentional murder of another person-nadat, he had deadly shot the 59-year-old James Appleton in 2017. He was sentenced to 30 years old.

Mr Appleton worked in the water department of the city. He was shot and killed as he spoke with his brother -in -law, the then mayor of Gateway Andrew Tillman, on 23 February 2017, according to the American partner CBS News of the BBC.

The police later found Mr Appleton’s body in a car.

During the fact that the murder of Mr Appleton was served, the DNA certificate that connected Hardin to the long unsolved rape of Amy Harrison at the Frank Tillery Elementary School in Rogers, Arkansas, in November 1997.

According to a branch of CBS News, Mrs. Harrison was raped under shot while she left a classroom to go to the bathroom.

Hardin pleaded guilty and was given a 50 -year sentence.

Before he became Gateway’s police chief, Hardin served as an officer at the Eureka Springs Police Department (ESPD).

He resigned in October 1996 after he had been informed by ESPD Chief Earl Hyatt that he would be fired for the falsification of a police report, according to the CBS News-Lied 5News.

“I was going to end him, but he resigned and he was caught on a police report,” said Hyatt reportedly.

Chief Hyatt also said he was not surprised about the conviction of Hardin and told 5News: “He was just always a very violent, excessive person and had a really bad mood.”

His escape from prison comes only a few weeks after a non -related incident in which 10 prisoners broke from a prison in New Orleans, Louisiana, after breaking the wall behind a toilet.