An Idaho maximum-security prison inmate, assisted by an unknown accomplice, escaped from a Boise hospital early on Wednesday in a hail of gunfire that left three corrections officers wounded, one of them critically, sparking an intense manhunt.
Skylar Meade, 31, a documented member of the Aryan Knights white supremacist gang serving time for aggravated battery, was last seen fleeing Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in a car with his accomplice, Boise Police Chief Ron Winegar said.
He had been housed under administrative segregation, a form of solitary confinement for inmates deemed especially dangerous, at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution near Kuna, Idaho, according to state Corrections Department chief Josh Tewalt.
Meade was taken to the hospital on Tuesday night for treatment of what Tewalt called "self-injurious behavior" that prison staff deemed serious enough to warrant emergency medical care.
At about 2:15 a.m. local time on Wednesday, as three corrections officers were preparing to transfer him back to prison, an individual waiting at the hospital's emergency department opened fire on the guards, wounding two of them.