The 10th and final escapee from a New Orleans jailbreak is captured after five months

Derrick Groves, the last of the 10 men who escaped from a New Orleans prison in May, was captured in the crawl space of a home in Atlanta on Wednesday.

The escapees, who ranged in age from their teens to early 40s, broke out of the Orleans Parish Justice Center in the early hours of May 16 by climbing through a hole in the wall behind a toilet, scaling a fence and crossing an interstate.

By the time authorities discovered them missing during a routine morning head count, they were long gone, leaving behind a smiley face and several taunting messages — including “To easy LoL” — scrawled on the bathroom wall.

Three of the escapes were recaptured in New Orleans later that same day, and all but two had been taken into custody by the end of May. The ninth inmate, Antoine Massey, was apprehended six weeks after the jailbreak, in late June.

That left only Groves on the run. The 28-year-old convicted murderer eluded authorities for months, despite a multi-agency effort to track him down.

Louisiana State Police Superintendent Robert Hodges told reporters on Wednesday that the task force investigating the jailbreak learned in early October that Groves was likely in the Atlanta area. They traced him to a particular residence through “information gathered via multiple search warrants and other investigative means.”

Police, U.S. Marshals and a SWAT team arrived at the house in southwest Atlanta on Thursday to execute warrants, and ultimately took Groves into custody after what police described as a brief standoff.

“We deployed a number of canisters of gas to help move him throughout the house … he moved to the basement of the house,” Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Kelley Collier said at the scene. “Soon after, Clayton County K-9 was deployed in the crawl space of the location, and found him in that crawl space.”

Officials declined to say what brought Groves to that particular house or how long he had been there. But Collier said no one else was inside at the time of his apprehension.

A video of Groves’ arrest, shared by the Atlanta Police Department, shows Groves blowing a kiss to the camera as he is helped into the back of a cruiser.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry cheered the news of the 10th and final escapee’s capture on social media.

“You picked the wrong State,” Landry wrote. “Thank you to our incredible law enforcement officials from the federal, state, and local level who worked tirelessly to put each of these men back where they belong: BEHIND BARS.”

What happens next? 

Groves was convicted last October and sentenced to life in prison on two counts of murder in connection with a 2018 Mardi Gras-day double shooting.

He was also convicted of two counts of attempted murder and a federal firearms charge, for which he was awaiting sentencing at the Orleans Parish Justice Center at the time of the jailbreak.

Groves, like the other nine escapees, has also been charged with simple escape. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said he has a hearing scheduled for Thursday at which he can choose to waive extradition, or else the state will initiate proceedings to bring him back.

“He will be arraigned on those charges as soon as we get him back from Georgia,” Murrill said at Wednesday’s press conference, adding that he will eventually join the other escapees in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Murrill said her office is looking into whether it can upgrade Grove’s charges to aggravated escape in light of the materials discovered at the Atlanta house, which she said “included weapons and drugs.”

She also said she expects Groves to be prosecuted in Georgia, “and possibly by the feds.”

“He’s got a lot of trouble and a lot of things to answer to, to both the state of Louisiana and the state of Georgia,” Murrill said, adding that the manhunt was expensive as well as scary for district attorney staff, victims and witnesses in the cases that put Groves behind bars.

“It’s a very unsettling thing to have somebody out like this … so today is a very good day.”

Who else is facing charges? 

Murrill vowed that anyone who may have helped Groves will be arrested and prosecuted.

More than a dozen people have been arrested for aiding the escapees, both in prison and once they got out.

Those include a jail employee who told investigators that he turned the water off in the cell after one of the inmates “threatened to shank him” (he maintains he was just unclogging a toilet and was unaware of the escape plans), as well as another man being held in the same prison who faces 10 counts of “principal to simple escape.”

In the weeks after the jailbreak, authorities charged 11 other people with “accessory after the fact” for alleged actions including contacting the inmates by phone before and after their escape, transporting them on the outside and supplying some with food and cash.

Another twist came in June, when a former correctional center employee — and Groves’ girlfriend — was arrested on a felony charge of conspiracy to commit simple escape, “in connection with the recent escape of multiple inmates.”

Murrill’s office said Darriana Burton, Groves’ “on-again, off-again” girlfriend of three years, was a sheriff’s office employee from August 2022 until March 2023, when she was fired — but not charged — for bringing contraband into the jail.

The Associated Press, citing a police affidavit for Burton’s arrest, reported that Groves video called Burton on a jail-issued iPad two days before the escape, and she helped him speak with an unidentified man in a vague conversation that “appeared to coordinate communication on other, unmonitored lines.” A judge set her bond at $2.5 million.

Louisiana politicians say there are others to blame for the jailbreak, pointing the finger at each other as well as broader systemic failures.

Gov. Landry, a Republican who has pushed a tough-on-crime agenda, has blamed progressive politics and ordered multiple investigations into New Orleans’ criminal justice system. Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson has taken responsibility for the jailbreak but also blamed a lack of resources, from faulty locks to staffing shortages, as well as the escapees’ network of accomplices.

In July, another inmate at the same jail was mistakenly released due to what officials say was a clerical error stemming from two similar last names. Khalil Bryan was captured in August, after a monthlong manhunt, and two deputies were fired over the incident. That same month, Hutson announced the facility had secured $15 million to make safety and security upgrades.