Cops Caused a 12-Hour Jail Lockdown After Misplacing a Murderer

Officials of the Clayton County Jail in Georgia threw the facility into lockdown after thinking a convicted murderer had escaped from custody. As it turns out, however, they actually had just misplaced him; he was in the courthouse the whole time, right where they left him.

Julian Brooks Deloach caught a murder conviction in 1984, was paroled in 2010, and ended up back in custody after a recent misdemeanor. Deloach was being temporarily housed at the county jail while on loan from the state prison. After a court appearance, officers returned to the jail…without Deloach.

Surely, he must have escaped their grasp. These are the finest officers in all the land, after all, and DeLoach is surely a master criminal who thinks 10 chess moves ahead of everyone around him. The jail went into full lockdown for 12 hours like Jason Bourne was on the loose. They turned the place upside down looking for this dangerous escaped convict but came up empty-handed.

They scrubbed through hours of security footage from multiple cameras, eventually retracing their steps, hoping they would remember where they left a whole human. Finally, it dawned on them, over half a day later: they left him in a courthouse holding cell.

There was no daring escape so legendary that it’ll forever echo in the halls of eternity. No Shawshank Redemption-style tale of glory and perseverance. Just a guy sitting in an unsupervised cell with nothing but a bench and a toilet. No one noticed because the courthouse holding cells aren’t supposed to have people in them after 6 PM. No one even came by to double-check, presumably assuming their fellow officers weren’t completely incompetent.

Sheriff Levon Allen eventually put two and two together after watching security footage, finding Deloach right where officers had left him, all the while waiting patiently like a good little convicted murderer.

The sheriff recommended demotions for two correctional sergeants and suspensions for two courthouse deputies. Three of the officers admitted they messed up and waived their hearings for their part in what might be the most chill prison break that never actually happened. Sometimes people fall through the cracks of the US justice system. Other times, people just kind of wait around for a while until someone remembers they’re there.