Man Trapped In Cook County Jail For 30 Hours
By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 9, 2014 2:30PM
Cook County Jail officials are apologizing for and investigating how a man visiting to the jail wound up trapped there for a 30-stretch last weekend.
The man arrived at the jail around 6 p.m. Saturday to visit his son, who is an inmate there awaiting trial on a drug case. But his son was moved to a different area of the jail with which the man wasn’t familiar. After he was processed the man was instructed to head to the visitor area but made a wrong turn and walked through a door that was propped open, which promptly closed behind him.
The man was trapped in a room where super-maximum security prisoners receive visitors until he broke off a sprinkler head shortly after midnight Sunday, setting off an alarm.
According to Cook County Jail executive director Cara Smith, the man tried pounding on the concrete door to get someone’s attention but “there’s no reason to check on that room because it’s not used on the weekends.” Ironically, the room was being fitted with cameras for better security.
“We’re been looking at how and why and what went wrong,’’ Smith said. “Multiple things obviously failed including a contractor leaving a door open while they did work in our jail. It was a perfect storm of circumstances that led to this horrible incident.’’