Escaped Inmates Involved in Robbery

By JAMIE STENGLE Associated Press Writer

October 13, 2001, 7:27 PM EDT

DALLAS -- Two escaped inmates were involved in an armed robbery Saturday, a day after they broke out of jail with three other men, took a woman hostage and fled in stolen pickup trucks, authorities said.

The two men who robbed two people in east Texas at gunpoint were accompanied by an unidentified woman and had a variety of weapons, Lt. John Norton of the Collin County Sheriff's Department said.

Norton said the men stole a truck owned by one of the robbery victims and left behind a truck they had stolen Friday from a horse stable.

"We have no clue where they're headed," Norton said, adding that he didn't know the whereabouts of the third escapee. "We're following up on leads."

Two of the five inmates were captured Friday.

The men escaped from the Grayson County Jail in north Texas on Friday after they jimmied the locks on their cell doors, crawled through the ventilation system and tunneled their way out through a dirt floor in the basement, leaving behind wadded-up sheets and newspapers in their bunks.

They were tracked to Joyce Silvius's stables near Prosper, about 40 miles north of Dallas. Two of the men -- Jeremy John Reynolds, 21, and Jerry W. Riley, 24 -- were captured there. Officials would not give details of the capture.

Three others -- Bob Harold Leach, 38; Gerald Lynn Gantt, 45; Brian Jeremy Riley, 27 -- took Silvius hostage and fled in stolen pickup trucks. It was not clear which two were involved in Saturday's robbery.

The inmates had been jailed on various charges including assault, kidnapping and child rape, said Lt. David Hawley of the Grayson County Sheriff's department. Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press

-- Anonymous, October 13, 2001