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Houston police search for escaped death row inmate

Posted on: Friday, 4 November 2005, 13:21 CST

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Police searched in downtown Houston and surrounding areas on Friday for a prisoner who escaped from Harris County Jail a week after he was sentenced to die for two 1998 murders.

Charles Victor Thompson, 35, donned civilian clothes and brandished a fake law enforcement identification badge to bluff his way out of the facility in the city center on Thursday and had not been seen since, Harris County Sheriff's Office spokesman John Martin said.

Martin said police from numerous agencies were looking for Thompson, who on October 28 was sentenced to death by lethal injection by a jury in Houston for killing his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend in a 1998 shooting attack.

Martin said it was not known how Thompson got the civilian clothes or the fake badge, but investigators were trying to determine if he had help inside or outside the jail during his getaway.

He was being held in the local jail prior to being transferred to the state's death row in the east Texas town of Livingston, Martin said.

Source: REUTERS

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