Authorities are searching for an inmate described as “very dangerous” who officials say escaped from a prison in northwestern Pennsylvania using bed sheets.
WARREN, Pa. — Authorities searched Saturday for an inmate described by police as “very dangerous” who escaped from a prison in northwestern Pennsylvania using bed sheets, officials said.
Michael Burham was last seen wearing a blue denim prison coat, white and orange pants and orange shoes, Warren police said Friday.
Burham was being held on arson and burglary charges and was a suspect in a homicide investigation, police said. He was also associated with a carjacking and an earlier kidnapping of a local couple, police said.
“It is considered very dangerous and the public is asked to be vigilant and report anything out of the ordinary,” police said in a Facebook post.
Officials say he escaped by climbing into exercise equipment and using tied sheets.
Two decades ago, on the opposite side of the commonwealth, an inmate charged with murder after bodies were unearthed on his Wilkes-Barre property took advantage of a botched repair job and used a rope made from sheets to climb down from a seventh floor cell of the Luzerne County Jail. Officials said a window repaired after a 1989 escape attempt had two panes that were too small and secured only with caulk, so they broke easily.
Hugo Selenski spent three days on the run after the October 2003 escape before turning himself in. Another inmate was injured in a fall during the escape attempt and was recaptured. Selenski overcame two counts of murder in a 2006 trial, but was convicted of two murders in 2015 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
