Convicted rapist who escaped prison on jet ski with help from mother captured

31 August 2023 , 04:31

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Samuel Hartman escaped the jail with help from his wife and mother (Image: AP)

Samuel Hartman escaped prison on a jet ski, where he was serving a life sentence after being convicted of raping his 14-year-old stepdaughter. He has now been successfully re-arrested, police say.

The Arkansas man was arrested with his wife Misty, his mother Linda White, and his mother's boyfriend Rodney Trent at a hotel in Lewisburg, West Virginia. On 12 August 2022, the 39-year-old Hartman was on a work detail in a field near the East Arkansas Regional Unit in Arkansas where he was serving his sentence.

According to the US Marshals Service, a vehicle approached the inmates and two women exited who the US Marshals Service allege to be Misty Hartman and White. The two women allegedly had guns and fired bullets at the guards while Samuel Hartman ran to the truck.

Samuel Hartman escaped the jail with help from his wife and mother (AP)

Linda White helped her son escape from prison (HANDOUT)

The women and Hartman fled to the Mississippi River with correctional officers in hot pursuit, but allegedly got away on "pre-staged" jet skis, officials said. Later, the jet skis were found abandoned on the Mississippi side of the river and a witness reported that they saw a man and two women riding them earlier. The Marshals learned that Hartman had ties to West Virginia, so they contacted the Southern District of West Virginia to help in the search.

A year and seventeen days after his escape, officials said they found the foursome at a Quality Inn in West Virginia on Tuesday and Arkansasans breathed a sigh of relief. "Today’s announcement is the culmination of a year of outstanding, dedicated work by our heroic law enforcement officers," the governor of Arkansas Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement to the press. "Now that they have brought this dangerous fugitive to justice, all Arkansans can sleep safer at night," she added.

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Misty helped her husband escape (HANDOUT)

Trent was charged with harbouring a fugitive (HANDOUT)

The mother's boyfriend, Trent, 52 years old, was charged with harbouring a sex offender and assisting White, Misty Hartman, and Samuel Hartman while they were on the run, said police. The US Marshals Service did not specify what charges Misty, 39 years old, and White, 61 years old, would be facing, but mentioned that the West Virginia State Police, the Lewisburg Police Department, and the Greenbrier County Sheriff’s Office all contributed to the eventual capture of Hartman and his crew.

According to police records, Samuel Hartman was convicted of raping his young stepdaughter in 2013. He was reportedly serving life in prison when he made his escape.

Tatiana Krisztina