06/25/08

At 9:30 Monday night, 39 year old Scott Howard Holmes escaped from the Gooding County Jail.

Some sources say this was his third successful escape from this jail.

Gooding County Sheriff Chief Deputy Jerry Pierce said, "This time, this being an older jail, he had managed to manipulate the door so that it could be opened without a key."

Pierce says Holmes didn't have any physical contact with or overpower a jailer. A guard on duty came by Holmes' cell door and noticed he was gone.

Pierce commented that "We had Gooding City, Jerome County, ISP, Gooding County, Wendell City, they all came to help. We had a lot of people scouring this town."

Pierce says police don't know where Holmes is. Holmes has previous convictions for burglary - aggravated assault - and forgery in Twin Falls and Minidoka Counties.

Pierce says if they had felt public safety was an immediate concern, the sheriff's office would have notified the public right away.

"We did not feel that Mr. Holmes was an immediate threat to anyone out in the public. We feel that his main goal was to disappear, and lay low, and then be gone from the area."