Prisoner escapes with Prisoner Van and Shotgun
The Associated Press 
The Charleston Gazette, PA - 09/29/02 


BRIDGEPORT - Authorities from at least seven police agencies searched 
central West Virginia on Friday for a prisoner armed with a pump 
shotgun  who escaped from a transport van.

Christopher Paul Savage, 28, of Hastings, Pa., faked an illness and 
convinced guards to stop at a gas station at Eastpointe Plaza off 
Interstate 79, said investigator David Wygal of the Clarksburg Police 
Department.

After a guard removed Savage's handcuffs, he overpowered and slightly 
injured both guards. Savage then drove the van to a closed restaurant 
about a quarter-mile from the gas station and fled with the shotgun, 
Wygal said.

Eight other prisoners, who were still wearing shackles and not involved 
in the plot, were captured in the van at the restaurant at a nearby
post office, a Harrison County dispatcher said.

Police concentrated the search in a heavily wooded area one mile from 
when the suspect abandoned the van. Police stopped a CSX coal train after
a witness said she saw a man fitting the suspect's description trying to 
board the moving train. No one was found.

The search for Savage, which was called off for darkness Friday night,
was to resume today.

Police believe Savage was not wearing shackles. He is white, about 
5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 145 pounds. He has brown hair,
hazel eyes, two-day growth of facial hair and tattoos on his left 
arm and was wearing a dark shirt and jeans.

Savage was headed for the Cambria County Jail in Pennsylvania, 
said Keldeen Stambaugh, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Board of 
Probation and Parole. Savage had been picked up at an Indiana jail,
Stambaugh said.

Savage had previously been sentenced on charges of robbery and
escape, criminal solicitation, burglary and criminal trespassing,
Stambaugh said.

He was later paroled to a community corrections center, but was 
declared delinquent in May 2001, Stambaugh said. Savage was
on his way Friday to a hearing for technical parole violations
when he escaped, Stambaugh said.

Another inmate was to be taken to Camp Hill Prison in Camp Hill, Pa., 
she said, and had been picked up in Florida.

"He is still secured and will be transported as planned," she said.

Stambaugh was not sure where the other seven inmates were picked up 
or where they were headed.

Walker said he could not give out that information, but said the inmates 
were going to "several different counties up through the East Coast."

"Our primary concern right now is the public safety of the people
that live... there, Clarksburg or where the incident took place,
wherever this guy could go," Walker said.

The dispatcher said the guards had minor facial injures. Their names 
were not immediately available.

State Police, the Harrison County Sheriff's Department and police from
Clarksburg, Bridgeport, Nutter Fort and Anmoore participated in
the search.


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