A former police chief and convicted murderer and rapist who escaped prison in Arkansas last week was apprehended Friday less than two miles from the facility he fled.
Grant Hardin’s identity was confirmed by fingerprints, the Izard County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post announced his recapture.
Hardin, 56, walked out of the the North Central Unit in Calico Rock on May 25 wearing what resembled a Department of Corrections uniform that apparently fooled a prison officer who opened a gate a let him out, as CrimeOnline reported.
Hardin was serving a 30 year prison sentence for a 2017 murder and a 50-year sentence for the rape of a school teacher in 1997. He pleaded guilty to both crimes in 2018.
He served as Gateway’s police chief for about four months in early 2016 and had been a Eureka Springs police officer in the mid-1990s, resigning when he was reportedly told he was going to be fired for lying in a police report. He also served as a Benton County constable from 2009-2010 and 2013-2014 and a corrections officer in Fayetteville.
Elite search teams had been scouring the rugged Ozark Mountains for the missing inmate — and even believed he had fled the state — since his apparently easy escape, but in the end, he was found just a mile and a half away from the prison, the sheriff’s office said.
The state Department of Corrections said Hardin was taken into custody shortly after 3 p.m. on Friday near Moccasin Creek in Izard County.
“Tracking dogs were able to pick up a scent in the area, and Hardin was apprehended a short time later,” the department said.
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[Featured image: Grant Hardin/Arkansas Department of Corrections]
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Author: KC Wildmoon
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