Two employees from the Rhode Island detention center where a federal inmate made a dramatic New Year’s Eve getaway have been placed on paid leave, the warden said Monday, while officials continue to search for the fugitive and investigate how he made his escape.
The US Marshals Service said Monday they are engaged in a “large-scale, around the clock’’ manhunt for James Walter Morales, aided by state and local law enforcement. The marshals warned that Morales is considered extremely dangerous and may be armed.
Investigators are analyzing numerous leads and have gathered information “from several locations Mr. Morales may have visited since his escape, as well as from evidence seized by law enforcement,’’ the US Marshals said in a statement.
“We’re working on it,’’ US Marshal Jamie Hainsworth added by phone.
The 35-year-old Morales, a former Army reservist, escaped Saturday night from the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, a privately operated federal jail in Central Falls, R.I., crossing the nearby Massachusetts border and stealing a getaway car in Attleboro.
Two Wyatt employees have since been placed on administrative leave, warden Daniel Martin said. In an e-mail, Martin said Morales’s “manner of escape’’ was still being investigated, and declined further comment.
WPRI in Rhode Island reported that Morales had climbed a basketball hoop during recreation time around 7 p.m. Saturday, cut through fencing, and passed through several rows of razor ribbon before descending to the ground. His absence was not discovered until an inmate count about three hours later.
Morales had been awaiting trial on charges that he broke into a Worcester armory in November 2015 and stole a cache of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. At the time, he was wearing a GPS monitoring bracelet while awaiting trial in Middlesex County on charges of child rape.
Officials say Morales smashed through a kitchen window at the Army Reserve facility where he had previously served as a medical specialist, scaled a shipping container-sized weapons vault, and cut through that vault’s roof with a power saw and pry bar to steal six M4 carbines and 10 M11 handguns.
The FBI linked Morales to that crime through cellphone records, the coordinates of his monitoring bracelet, which Morales allegedly cut off the next morning, and blood stains left behind in the armory vault, according to an FBI affidavit.
A few months earlier, Morales had been indicted in Middlesex Superior Court on charges of aggravated and forcible rape of a child under 14, for allegedly touching a friend’s child in Cambridge. He pleaded not guilty and was released with a monitoring device while awaiting trial, according to court records.
Morales worked for the Cambridge Department of Public Works in 2013, records show. The morning after the Worcester theft, Morales visited a Dorchester couple, Ashley Bigsbee and Tyrone James, for help selling some of the guns, in exchange for keeping one of the M4 assault rifles, federal officials say.
Three days after that, agents arrested Morales, who has ties to Cambridge and Framingham as well as to New York City, on Long Island, New York. They found six of the stolen weapons, and police later recovered three of the other guns.
Morales’s New Year’s Eve escape came less than three weeks after Bigsbee and James pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing, storing, and selling stolen firearms and to lying to the FBI. Lawyers for Bigsbee and James, who have yet to be sentenced, said they did not engage in plea deals with the government in exchange for testifying against Morales.
“There’s no plea agreement with my client. She hasn’t cooperated with the government . . . [and] she hasn’t been offered anything by the government,’’ said Blake Rubin, Bigsbee’s lawyer. Rubin described Morales as an acquaintance of Bigsbee prior to the gun deal.
“She barely knew him,’’ Rubin said.
Jonathan Shapiro, James’s lawyer, said by e-mail that “James will not be testifying against’’ Morales, and declined to comment further.
The mayor of Central Falls, James A. Diossa said in a statement that he found the escape “extremely concerning,’’ and that the city expects “a high level of safety and security for our residents.’’ The mayor said he was still awaiting “a full briefing on what has occurred.’’
Morales is 6 feet tall and weighs 175 pounds. He is black, bald, and has a tattoo of an eagle on the left side of his neck. He also has tattoos on his hands that read “King’’ and “Sherrelle,’’ according to the wanted poster. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to contact the marshals service at 1-800-336-0102.
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at eric.moskowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeMoskowitz.
