A white supremacist Idaho prison gang member and an accomplice remained on the loose Wednesday after the accomplice staged a brazen overnight attack to free the inmate as he was being transported from a Boise hospital, police said.
Three corrections officers were shot and wounded — two by the accomplice and one by responding police — during the attack in the ambulance bay at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center.
Police throughout the region were looking for the suspected shooter — still unidentified as of Wednesday afternoon — as well as the escaped inmate, described by officials as white supremacist gang member Skylar Meade. Meade, 31, was sentenced to 20 years in 2017 for shooting at a sheriff’s sergeant during a high-speed chase.
The pair fled in a gray four-door sedan, possibly a Honda Civic, with Idaho plates, police said.
The attack occurred at 2:15 a.m. as Idaho Department of Correction officers prepared to bring Meade back to prison. Department Director Josh Tewalt said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon that Meade was taken to the hospital at 9:35 p.m. Tuesday after he engaged in “self-injurious behavior” and medical staff determined he needed emergency care.
One officer shot by the suspect was in critical but stable condition, police said, while the second wounded officer had serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The third injured corrections officer also sustained non-life-threatening injuries when a responding officer — incorrectly believing the shooter was still in the emergency room and seeing an armed person near the entrance — opened fire.
“This brazen, violent, and apparently coordinated attack on Idaho Department of Corrections personnel, to facilitate an escape of a dangerous inmate, was carried out right in front of the Emergency Department, where people come for medical help, often in the direst circumstances,” Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar said in a written statement.
Meade, 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, has face tattoos with the numbers 1 and 11 — for A and K, the first and 11th letters of the alphabet, representing the Aryan Knights gang he affiliated with, Tewalt said. Photos released by police also showed an A and K tattooed on his abdomen.
Meade had been held in a type of solitary confinement called administrative segregation at Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) south of Boise, because officials deemed him a severe security risk, Tewalt said.
Meade had been escorted in the ambulance and at the hospital by two uniformed, unarmed officers wearing ballistic vests, tailed by armed staff, Tewalt said. Under standard procedure for transporting a high-risk inmate, unarmed guards are on each side of the prisoner while an armed guard follows, he said.
Authorities did not say what security measures were in place when Meade left the hospital, or whether he was handcuffed, shackled or walking on his own.
The attack came amid a wave of gun violence at hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the threats.
A Saint Alphonsus spokesperson said the shooting happened in the ambulance bay by its emergency department.
“All patients and staff are safe, the medical center campus is safe and secure, and has resumed normal operations. The Emergency Department itself is currently under temporary lockdown while the Boise Police Department completes the investigation,” Leticia Ramirez said Wednesday morning in a statement.
She said as an added precaution, “we have increased security on campus, all entrances to the hospital will be closed” and monitored by hospital security until further notice.
Ramirez declined to comment when asked about Meade, deferring to the police department.
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Johnson reported from Seattle and Thiessen from Anchorage, Alaska.