Friday, April 25, 2014

WELCOME BACK!!!!: TDCJ ESCAPEE RETURNED TO PRISON


Brownsville, Texas - Thursday afternoon Mexican authorities met US Federal agents at the international bridge and returned escapee, kidnapper, and attempted Houston cop killer Jose Juan Salaz.
 
Salaz, who was extradited back to Texas Thursday, was captured by Mexican authorities back in February and was returned yesterday to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. 
 
A History of Violence
 
Salaz was arrested on April 2, 1995 by Houston police after he and an accomplice exchanged gunfire with police after abducting and holding a bartender for ransom.  As a result of the gun battle Jim Binford, former Houston homicide detective, was wounded in the incident by friendly fire from another police officer.
 
Salaz was being held at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Garza East Unit in Beeville, when he escaped through an unlocked recreation yard door, scaled three 16 foot prison fences before 10 p.m. on March 22, 1997 while officers in the picket towers just watch.
 
Both officers in the outside picket towers were fired for not taking action to stop the escape.  The employee's unions recently questioned the standards being set in training, after the state reduced standards and increased their demerit system. 



Currently on the Land
 
Jose Fernando Bustos-Diaz is currently the only escapee from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to have not been captured.  Diaz who was serving a 35 year sentence for murder, escaped from the TDCJ Briscoe Unit, Dilley, Texas, on April 6, 2010, at around 5:30 am after him and  another inmate, Octavio Ramos Lopez, cut a hole in the perimeter fence next to a prison factory the inmates were assigned to work in. 
 
Octavio Ramos Lopez was captured by the McAllen police in August on 2010 after they ran a search warrant on an apartment containing 68 kilos of cocaine. 


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