HOUSTON (AP) _ A convicted sex offender serving a life sentence pulled a gun on two guards during a prison transfer Monday.
State prison officials say 49-year-old Arcade Joseph Comeaux Jr. held the guards hostage briefly before fleeing on foot in one of the guard’s uniforms.
Officials say that at the time of the escape, the inmate was in a wheelchair that he claimed he needed to help move him around.
Prison system spokesman Michelle Lyons says the guards were transferring Comeaux from a prison in Huntsville, north of Houston, to one in Beaumont, in southeast Texas, when he made his bid for freedom.
Comeaux took the officers’ weapons and handcuffed them together in the back of the vehicle before fleeing on foot. The officers were found unharmed about an hour later.
Lyons said Comeaux was wearing one of the officer’s gray uniforms and black boots and took the guards’ weapons, a shotgun and two semiautomatic pistols. He left his own weapon behind.
The Texas Department of Public Safety says several unconfirmed sightings of Comeaux were reported in the Baytown area. The escape triggered a lockdown at Lee College and three campuses in the Goose Creek school district, in and around Baytown.