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Jail escapee found in Myrtle Beach

After sprinting out the front door a few weeks ago, an escaped Haywood County inmate is back behind bars.

Frank Evans, who gave sheriff’s deputies the slip last month, was captured Myrtle Beach, S.C. and is now in state prison in Lexington.

Haywood County Sheriff Bobby Suttles said he couldn’t divulge specific details about just how they found Evans, but said they were operating on a tip that he may have gone in that direction.

Before Evans slipped out the front door, a deputy discovered him trying to punch a hole in the ceiling of a holding room where he was awaiting transfer to state prison.

A roof escape from the holding room isn’t unheard of, and had proved a successful means of egress for a jail prisoner in the past. The job was quite labor-intensive, however.

“It would’ve probably taken him some time to do that, and the jailer noticed,” said Suttles.

Instead, the prisoner was brought into the lobby to wait until the transport arrived, and that’s when he slipped out the door.

According to his record, Evans is something of a career criminal. He’s already done several stints in prison and had just been sentenced to 22 to 28 months following a week-long trial for larceny and breaking-and-entering, along with parole violations.

This time, Evans had been caught stealing commercial and industrial tools from a storage building last June. He was spotted by a suspicious onlooker and the tools and equipment that had gone missing from the building were eventually found in his truck.

There is, as yet, no word on what Evans’ bid for freedom will do for his sentence.