Two inmates who escaped from an Arizona prison in Florence last weekend were recaptured in Coolidge, police in the nearby Pinal County city said Thursday.
Coolidge police officers and U.S. deputy marshals captured and arrested David T. Harmon and John B. Charpiot after police received calls from at least two residents who reported having seen the inmates, the Police Department said in a statement.
The two inmates were being held pending pickup by the state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, police said.
→ Multiple Security Failures Allowed Inmates To Escape Arizona Prison
Harmon and Charpiot escaped Saturday from the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence by using tools to breach a fence, officials said previously.
Coolidge is 8 miles southwest of Florence.
The manhunt involved local, state and federal law enforcement. Authorities looking for the inmates conducted door-to-door searches of homes in the area of the Florence prison.
David Gonzales, U.S. Marshal for the District Of Arizona, said five U.S. deputy marshals were in Coolidge on an unrelated case when a citizen reported seeing the escaped inmates nearby. Gonzales said officers surrounded the fugitives in a cotton field.
“They would not obey commands. At one point both of them said, ‘Just shoot me,’" Gonzales said. "They were both asking for the Coolidge PD officers and the deputy marshals to kill them.”
Officers used stun guns to subdue Charpiot and Harmon and took them into custody. They are being held in the Pinal County jail and face additional charges related to the escape.
The Department of Corrections is conducting an internal investigation into how the inmates were able to break out of prison.
Charpiot was sent to prison in 2011 on a 35-year sentence on convictions in Maricopa County for molestation of a child and sexual abuse, while Harmon has been imprisoned since 2012 after being convicted in Maricopa County and sentenced to 100 years for kidnapping and second-degree burglary.
