Arrested New Orleans jail worker says he helped inmates escape after stabbing threat

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A New Orleans jail maintenance worker has been arrested and is being held on a $1.1 million bond after admitting he turned water off to a toilet covering a hole in a cell wall, allowing 10 men to squeeze through the gap in one of the largest jailbreaks in recent U.S. history.

The inmates pulled off the daring escape early Friday by yanking open a faulty cell door, moving the toilet and slithering through the hole. Graffiti on the wall included the message “To Easy LoL,” with an arrow pointing to the gap.

On Tuesday evening state police confirmed that Corey Boyd, 19, became the fifth of the escapees to be apprehended.

Boyd is accused of killing a person who caught him and others trying to break into a car in April 2024, the Times-Picayune/ NOLA.com reported, allegedly striking the victim with a vehicle before someone else shot the person. He has has been charged with second-degree murder and pleaded not guilty.

Officials have underscored multiple security lapses in the escape, including ineffective cell locks and the fact that the inmates got out when the lone guard monitoring them went to get food. The absence of the inmates, many charged with or convicted of violent offenses such as murder, was not reported to law enforcement for hours.

During a tense New Orleans City Council meeting on Tuesday, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson, who oversees the jail, said she takes “full accountability.”

“There were procedural failures and missed notifications, but there were also intentional wrongdoings. This was a coordinated effort aided by individuals inside our own agency who made the choice to break the law,” Hutson said. “We are continuing to pursue everyone involved.”

Responding to a question from Councilmember Oliver Thomas, Hutson said she could not guarantee that inmates would not be left unattended again, noting that the jail is operating with 60% staffing capacity.

Hutson announced in the evening that she was pausing her reelection campaign, saying in a social media post that “restoring public trust and my commitment to security, accountability, and public safety must come before politics.”

Hutson has been sheriff since May 2022, and there are several challengers for the position in the election later this year.

The inmates escaped by removing a sink-toilet combination unit from a cell and then cutting steel bars behind the sink, Hutson said. After bending the bars, they slipped out. It's unclear what they used to saw through the bars.

Authorities believe sheriff's employees helped, and three have been suspended. On Tuesday authorities made their first staff arrest.

Maintenance worker Sterling Williams, 33, admitted that one of the escapees “advised him to turn the water off in the cell,” the Louisiana Attorney General’s office said in a statement.

Williams is charged with 10 counts of principal to simple escape and one count of malfeasance in office, with a $100,000 bond per charge.

Michael Kennedy, Williams' appointed attorney, said he intends to plead not guilty.

Several of Williams' family members did not respond to requests for comment.

Williams said one of the escapees threatened to “shank” him if he did not turn off the water, according to an arrest affidavit. Another tried to take Williams’ phone and attempted to get him to bring a book with cash app information.

Attorney General Liz Murrill said Williams “made some bad decisions” and should have brought the threat and escape plan to someone’s attention.

Thomas said the sheriff’s office has a responsibility to protect employees and create a safe environment for reporting threats and other problems.

“We cannot allow the inmates to run the facilities. That can’t happen,” Thomas said. “We cannot allow them to threaten the men and women who work there.”

According to the affidavit, Williams “willfully and maliciously assisted with the escape” and without his help the escapees would have flooded the cell and drawn attention.

Murrill told reporters that no additional charges have been filed against other employees but the investigation continues and “there could be more arrests.”

Officials have pointed to other security lapses before, during and after the jailbreak.

New Orleans officials grilled the sheriff's office about why there was an hourslong delay in reporting the escape.

While a head count of inmates normally starts around 6:30 a.m. and takes less than an hour, sheriff’s officials said they were still verifying whether inmates had escaped more than two hours later, according to Jeworski “Jay” Mallett, the jail’s chief of corrections. City and state police did not find out until around 10:30 a.m., more than nine hours after they broke out of the facility.

Local police, who have “exponentially vaster” resources to track down the inmates, should have been notified immediately, Councilmember J.P. Morrell said.

“There were failures, failures in our personnel,” Hutson said.

Many state and local officials say blame rests squarely on Hutson.

Five of the fugitives remain at large. Many of them were in jail awaiting trial or sentencing, including for murder charges.

“There are witnesses and victims, and all of those people are very, rightfully, unnerved by all of this,” Murrill said.

Christian Padilla, 30, who lives near where police were searching for Boyd, said he was relieved they caught him.

“That’s one less to worry about on the streets,” he said.

The sheriff’s office said more than 200 law enforcement personnel were part of the search for the fugitives. Up to $20,000 was offered for information leading to the capture of each one.

Antoine Massey, identified in the affidavit as the one who threatened to stab Williams, is one of those still on the run. According to the Morehouse Parish Sheriff’s Office, Massey also escaped from a jail in northeast Louisiana in 2019 and was recaptured the same day in a town in Texas, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) away.

“He was in the exercise yard and somehow cut part of the chain-link fence, enough to shimmy through the hole,” Morehouse Parish Sheriff Chief Deputy James Mardis said, adding that an accomplice was waiting with a car.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said she believes most of the escapees are within city limits. Officials have warned that anyone aiding them will face charges.

Meanwhile around 60 inmates at the jail have been transferred to more secure state prisons.

Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This story has been corrected to show the name of the jail’s chief of corrections is Jeworski “Jay” Mallett, not Mallet.

Louisiana state police enter a house on North Galvez street as they pursue a fugitive that escaped from a New Orleans jail, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Louisiana law enforcement work the scene on Iberville Street as they pursue a fugitive that escaped from a New Orleans jail, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Residents watch as police pursue a fugitive that escaped from a New Orleans jail, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

A Louisiana state police member works the scene on North Galvez Street as law enforcement pursue a fugitive that escaped from a New Orleans jail, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

This undated photo released by the Louisiana Attorney General's Office shows Sterling Williams. (Louisiana Attorney General's Office via AP)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia on Thursday called on Emirati-backed separatists in southern Yemen to withdraw from two governorates they now control, a move that has threatened to spark a confrontation within a fragile coalition that has been battling the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the country's north.

The statement from Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry appeared aimed at putting public pressure on the Southern Transitional Council, a separatist Yemeni force long supported by the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia backs the National Shield Forces of Yemen's internationally backed government in the war against the Houthis.

The separatists' actions have “resulted in an unjustified escalation that harmed the interests of all segments of Yemeni people, as well as the southern cause and the coalition’s efforts,” the ministry said. “The kingdom stresses the importance of cooperation among all Yemeni factions and components to exercise restraint and avoid any measures that could destabilize security and stability.”

Meanwhile, the Houthis buried four of their fighters, including the group's top missile and drone commander who was presumed killed in March, in the first round of U.S. airstrikes to hit the rebels in March.

The Southern Transitional Council moved earlier this month into Yemen's governorates of Hadramout and Mahra. The Saudi statement said that meditation efforts were underway to have the council's forces return to “their previous positions outside of the two governorates and hand over the camps in those areas” to the National Shield Forces.

“These efforts remain in progress,” the ministry said.

The local Hadramout governorate's authority said that it supported the Saudi announcement and called for the Emirati-backed separatists to withdraw to positions outside the governorates.

Those aligned with the council have increasingly flown the flag of the flag of South Yemen, which was a separate country from 1967-1990. Demonstrators rallied on Thursday in the southern port city of Aden to support political forces calling for South Yemen to again secede from Yemen.

Following the capture of Yemen's capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north by the Houthis in 2014, Aden has been the seat of power for the internationally recognized government and forces aligned against the Houthi rebels.

The actions by the separatists have put pressure on the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which maintain close relations and are members of the OPEC oil cartel, but also have competed for influence and international business in recent years.

There has also been an escalation of violence in Sudan, another nation in the Red Sea where the kingdom and the Emirates support opposing forces in an ongoing war.

The Houthis seized Sanaa in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile. Iran denies arming the rebels, although Iranian-manufactured weaponry has been found on the battlefield and in sea shipments heading to Yemen despite a U.N. arms embargo.

A Saudi-led coalition armed with U.S. weaponry and intelligence entered the war on the side of Yemen’s exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting have pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.

The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the globe’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.

The Houthis have launched attacks on hundreds of ships in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war, greatly disrupting regional shipping.

While traffic has inched up recently in the lull in attacks, many shippers continue to go around Africa through the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Further chaos in Yemen could again draw in the United States.

Washington launched an intense bombing campaign targeting the rebels earlier this year that U.S. President Donald Trump halted just before his trip to the Middle East in October. The Biden administration also conducted strikes against the Houthis, including using B-2 bombers to target what it described as underground bunkers used by the Houthis.

In Sanaa, crowds gathered as uniformed men carried five coffins draped in Yemen’s flag and topped with flowers during the funerals for the four Houthi fighters.

The dead fighters include Maj. Gen. Zakaria Abdullah Yahya Hajar, whom analysts identified as the group’s drone and missile chief. U.S. forces reportedly targeted Hajar, who allegedly received training from the expeditionary Quds Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, in a strike in March in Sanaa.

The Houthis provided no information on how or when he died. However, a transcript of a discussion between top American officials on the messaging app Signal later published by The Atlantic magazine included then national security adviser Mike Waltz referencing the initial March 15 attack targeting a Houthi missile commander.

“The first target — their top missile guy — we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz wrote at the time.

The Houthis have increasingly threatened Saudi Arabia and taken dozens of workers at U.N. agencies and other aid groups as prisoners, alleging without evidence that they were spies — something fiercely denied by the United Nations and others.

Supporters of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a coalition of separatist groups seeking to restore the state of South Yemen, hold South Yemen flags during a rally, in Aden, Yemen, Dec. 25, 2025. (AP Photo)

Supporters of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a coalition of separatist groups seeking to restore the state of South Yemen, hold South Yemen flags during a rally, in Aden, Yemen, Dec. 25, 2025. Arabic reads, "announcement of South Arab state". (AP Photo)

Houthi supporters carry the coffin of one of their leaders, who they said were killed during previous Israeli airstrikes, during a funeral at the people's mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

A boy prays in front of his relative coffin during the funeral of 5 Houthi leaders, who they said were killed during previous Israeli airstrikes, at the people's mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Houthi supporters carry the coffins of 5 leaders, who they said were killed during previous Israeli airstrikes, during a funeral at the people's mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Houthi supporters carry the coffins of 5 leaders, who they said were killed during previous Israeli airstrikes, during a funeral at the people's mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Houthi supporters carry the coffins of 5 leaders, who they said were killed during previous Israeli airstrikes, during a funeral at the people's mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)