Grant Hardin, 56, escaped on Sunday from a high-security prison in Arkansas, where he was serving a decades-long sentence for first-degree murder and rape.
A manhunt was underway in northern Arkansas after a former police chief convicted of first-degree murder and rape slipped out of a high-security prison, dressed in a fake law enforcement uniform.
Grant Hardin, 56, who had previously served as the police chief in Gateway, Ark., escaped from the Calico Rock North Central Unit around 2:50 p.m. on Sunday, county officials said. He is considered extremely dangerous.
An image released by the Stone County Sheriff’s Office on its Facebook page shows what it says is Mr. Hardin wearing clothes similar to a law enforcement uniform, escaping through a controlled gate while pushing a cart of utility materials.
“It has been determined that Hardin was wearing a makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement when he escaped the North Central Unit. He was not wearing a Department of Corrections uniform, and all DOC-issued equipment has been accounted for,” Rand Champion, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, said in a statement.
Mr. Hardin was briefly the police chief in Gateway, a small town near the Missouri border. He held several other law enforcement positions in the state beginning in the 1990s, including as an elected constable, according to public records and local news reports. He was terminated multiple times, and was trailed by reports of using excessive force, poor performance and, in one instance, falsifying a police report, according to local news media.
In 2017, Mr. Hardin was arrested and charged with shooting James Appleton just outside Gateway, where Mr. Appleton worked in the water department. According to the police affidavit, Mr. Appleton was pulled over in a pickup truck while he was on the phone with his brother-in-law, then was shot in the head at point-blank range with a shotgun.
