Inmate facing life in prison escapes

That dead-end road, the result of a third-strike kidnapping conviction, was probably on the 36-year-old's mind yesterday as he sat at the courthouse after a related hearing.


	McCord

He was unshackled and uncuffed, which is normal procedure for prisoners in a Pierce County courtroom. He had a fake handgun fashioned from cardboard and toilet paper tucked in his waistband, which is not.

It was 10:23 a.m. McCord made a run for it. Last night, he was still on the loose.

McCord's escape is by no means a first for Pierce County. In November 2000, a woman jailed on theft and burglary charges slipped out of a temporary Pierce County jail. Little more than a year earlier, a man was accidentally released after he posed as another inmate. And in March 1991, a man who was serving time on misdemeanor drug charges got away from the Pierce County Jail.

There have also been a number of escapes from Western State Hospital in Steilacoom, where some prisoners with medical needs are housed.

Sheriff's deputies are concerned about McCord because he has nothing to lose. He was convicted earlier this month of first-degree kidnapping, his third felony conviction and the trigger for a life term under the state's "three strikes" law. He was in court for a hearing on a charge related to that case when he bolted.

At one point after he took off running from a courtroom guarded by four corrections officers, McCord was caught. That's when he pulled out the surprisingly realistic cardboard gun.

"If you looked at this thing from more than 3 feet away, you'd think it was a gun," said sheriff's spokeswoman Lauren Pawlawski. "He went to the trouble of using a ballpoint pen or something to etch details and grooves into it."

Deputies don't know where McCord got the pseudo-weapon. They've searched his cell and found no trace of materials used to make it, Pawlawski said.

But when the first corrections officer caught him in a courthouse hallway, McCord pulled out the gun, pointed it at the officer's head and said "I'm going to kill you," according to Pawlawski.

The gun was convincing enough to cause two other officers to put down their weapons.

McCord then ran from the building and toward 11th Avenue South. He attempted to carjack one vehicle, which sped away. Then, he carjacked a blue GMC Sonoma pickup truck.

Police found the cardboard gun and McCord's gray shirt emblazoned with "PC JAIL" less than a half-hour later.

The fake gun didn't fool Gary Osbourne, the driver of the first car McCord tried to carjack.

"He was desperate. He was nervous. He wanted my car. He was scared and so was I," Osbourne told KOMO Radio. "He said, 'Get out of the car, I'm going to pop you.' "

Osbourne could see the gun wasn't real and drove off.

The Sonoma was later found near the Tacoma Cemetery, south of the Tacoma Mall.

McCord, who is 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds, is considered extremely dangerous. Anyone who sees him or knows where he may be should call 911.

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