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August 8, 2009

Kansas inmate is target of Kay County manhunt

By Violet Hassler, Staff Writer

Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers from Troop J in Enid were participating in a manhunt in Kay County Saturday after an inmate escaped Friday from a detention facility in Sumner County, Kan.

A Kay County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher said Jared Sanchez, 30, is considered armed and dangerous.

“He fired at one of my deputies,” Kerry Barrows said. She said the officer was not hurt.

A sheriff’s deputy spotted the car Sanchez was suspected of driving at the Oklahoma and Kansas state line on Oklahoma 177, Barrows said.

She said deputies did not initiate pursuit until the driver exited off I-35 into Blackwell. They pursued Sanchez east toward Blackwell and then west, ending west of I-35, where Sanchez wrecked the vehicle. He fled on foot in the 18,000 block of Ferguson, a rural area between Blackwell and Nardin, and ran into a creek bed, where he lost his pursuers.

Law enforcement officials converged on the area and were using search dogs, Barrows said.

She said her office received a call from Kansas Saturday afternoon reporting Sanchez was suspected of being in the area and received a description of Sanchez and his car.

Sanchez, a white male who is 6-feet tall and 200 pounds, with brown hair and eyes, was in the Wellington, Kan., detention facility on a warrant out of Louisiana, Barrows said. She did not know the particulars of his case there.

She said he is now wanted for escape and battery on a corrections officer out of Kansas.

Sanchez still was on the run as of 9 p.m. Saturday, but officials suspected he still was in the area of the search, according to Kay County dispatcher Jessica Wathor. Kansas authorities also were assisting in the search.

The Kay County department did not have a photo of Sanchez, but KWCH television station in Wichita, Kan., provided the News & Eagle with a photograph of the escapee.

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