Authorities in Georgia said they were searching for two inmates who killed a pair of prison guards and escaped early Tuesday morning while being transported through a rural area southeast of Atlanta.
The inmates were on a prison bus traveling on State Route 16 in Putnam County, when they overpowered the correctional officers on board, officials said.
“They then disarmed them and one of the subjects shot and killed both guards,” Howard R. Sills, the Putnam County sheriff, said in a statement.
After overpowering the guards at about 5:45 a.m., the inmates took the guards’ guns – .40 caliber Glock pistols – before carjacking a green 2004 Honda Civic and heading west toward Eatonton, Sills said.
Authorities did not immediately say where the inmates – both white men who records show had been held at Baldwin State Prison, a facility about 100 miles southeast of Atlanta – were being transported. Teresa Slade, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said there were 27 other inmates on the bus when those two inmates overpowered the guards.
Slade said authorities did not know where the inmates were heading Tuesday.
“We’re not sure,” she said. “We have the direction that they fled and we have a very wide net with all the surrounding counties. But the direction’s unknown.”
The Georgia Department of Corrections identified the inmates as Donnie Russell Rowe, 43, who was sentenced for aggravated assault, and Ricky Dubose, 24, sentenced for armed robbery. Officials urged anyone who sees the two men to contact police.
A spokeswoman for the corrections department said Tuesday morning that officials were still working to confirm more information about what happened.
“As these details become available, [the corrections department] will provide those as soon as possible,” Jeal Salter, the spokeswoman, said in an email. “Please keep the families of our officers in your thoughts and prayers.”
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, which tracks line of duty deaths, the two Georgia guards are the third and fourth corrections officer killed in the line of duty this year.
The first was Sgt. Steven Floyd, a veteran Delaware corrections official who died in February during a day-long hostage standoff at a state prison. Officials later said his death was a homicide caused by trauma. According to Texas officials, Shana Tedder, another veteran corrections official, died Friday “from an apparent medical emergency” while at a prison. Authorities there have said she had a “use of force” altercation with a prisoner.