With a janitor’s uniform and a bag of trash, inmate followed worker out prison door
An inmate who made a rare escape from a maximum security prison in Raleigh Friday managed to break out after donning a janitor’s uniform and following another employee out the door, according to an internal prison report.
Chad Lee Houser, who was in prison awaiting trial on murder charges, escaped from Central Prison about 5 p.m. and fled Raleigh in a stolen pickup truck, authorities say. He was caught later that night in Cumberland County, about 50 miles to the south.
Houser, 37, was wearing a mask and a janitor’s uniform when he followed a pharmacy specialist into a prison sally port — a part of the prison designed for controlled entries and exits, according to a Department of Public Safety incident report obtained by the Charlotte Observer.
The report spells out what happened next:
Houser entered the sally port carrying a bag of trash and motioned for an officer to let him through so he could dispose of it. The officer asked to see his I.D. card but he refused to provide one and kept motioning for the officer to open the outer sally port door.
The officer then “became suspicious of his behavior and instructed him to step back out of the sally port,” the report states.
Houser initially complied and stepped out of the sally port. The officer then turned her attention to the pharmacy worker who was attempting to leave, according to the incident report.
“As the sally port door was closing (Houser) suddenly ducked below the Control Station window and re-entered the sally port,” the report states.
While Houser was out of view of an officer in a control station window, the outer sally port door was opened to allow the pharmacy worker to leave the prison, according to the report.
That’s when Houser left the prison, carrying both a trash bag and a “wet floor” sign, the report states. He handed the sign to a prison sergeant and began “casually walking through the parking lot,” according to the report. Then he started running and scaled the prison’s outer perimeter fence.
About 15 minutes later, Raleigh police received a report of a white man stealing a pickup truck from a construction site. Houser was later caught by police in the Cumberland County town of Spring Lake. Houser is from the nearby town of Hope Mills, according to a Facebook post from Cumberland County sheriff Ennis Wright.
Houser has been charged in the death of his 2-month-old son, a watch commander with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office told the Raleigh News & Observer. He is awaiting trial on charges of first-degree murder, child abuse and fleeing to elude arrest, according to court records.
He was being held in Central Prison as a “safekeeper” at the request of Cumberland County authorities, according to DPS spokesman John Bull. Counties sometimes ship inmates from a local jail to a state prison if the person needs better health care, if their safety has been threatened or if co-defendants need to be separated.
Houser needed to receive medical care for chest pain at Central Prison’s facilities, according to ABC11.
Bull said DPS is investigating the escape and has put “initial safeguards” in place to prevent a recurrence.
“This was a very serious incident,” Bull wrote in an email to the Observer. “Procedures are being reviewed to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
If disciplinary actions against any prison employees are deemed to be warranted, they would likely be taken after the completion of the DPS investigation, Bull said.
Escapes from Central Prison are rare. The last one, Bull said, was in 1994.
This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 10:51 AM.
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