escape in Polunsky Unit

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A man who murdered a Houston police officer was among five inmates who tried to escape a maximum security prison in Livingston after a church service Friday night. 

 

Three of the inmates were shot by Polunsky prison tower guards and remain hospitalized.  

 

Juan Quintero - convicted in the 2006 death of officer Rodney Johnson - was not shot in the escape attempt, but he and all the others sustained lacerations from the razor wire atop a fence they scaled, said Jason Clark, Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman.  

 

Quintero's capital murder conviction in 2008 drew shock from Johnson's wife Joslyn Johnson, also a police officer, because jurors did not sentence Quintero to death but gave him life in prison. The case ignited debate over police policy on checking the immigration status of defendants and the death penalty.

 

Quintero is an illegal immigrant.

 

Quintero, who shot the officer from the back seat of a patrol car, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

 

Quintero and one of the other inmates were treated for their cuts and sent back to the Polunsky unit. 

The men left a worship service around 9 p.m., scaled an interior fence and were trying to scale a perimeter fence when guards opened fire.

 

All five of the inmates face charges of attempted escape, and their security classification is likely to change, affecting their housing privileges, Clark said.

 

Death row inmates are housed at Polunsky, but the inmates trying to break out were from the prison's general population. 

 

Another inmate linked to the escape was Albin Zelaya-Zelaya, serving a life sentence from Harris County for burglary with intent to commit a felony. When Harris County prosecutors were prosecuting Zelaya-Zelaya, they identified him as a native of  Honduras and an MS-13 gang member.

 

The other inmates are Michael Dueitt, serving a life sentence out of Calhoun County for capital murder; Donald Gower, serving a life sentence for capital murder in Lampass County and Terry McDonald, serving a life sentence for murder in El Paso County .