The 14-year-old boy who briefly escaped from Maine’s only youth prison on Friday reportedly broke out of a window and into the facility’s fenced yard, police records show.
“Juvenile escaped out the window and is contained somewhere within the back perimeter,” according to 911 dispatch notes obtained by the Bangor Daily News.
It is still not clear how the boy left the campus of Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland, but an officer for the city’s police department later found him drinking from a bottle of alcohol at a nearby gas station less than two hours after prison officials called 911 to report the escape, according the officer’s police report.
The episode is the second escape from Long Creek in a year. In July 2024, two boys climbed onto the prison’s roof and jumped off, then eluded authorities for several days. Earlier that year, during a period of unrest at the prison that highlighted longstanding concerns about its conditions and staffing shortage, a group of nine boys also broke out of the building but didn’t leave the yard.
Samuel Prawer, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Corrections, which oversees Long Creek, cited confidentiality laws in response to questions about how the boy escaped. He said the department takes the safety of prisoners and the community seriously.
“While I cannot provide specific details, I can share that following any event like the one from last Friday … our team conducts a post-incident review, evaluates measures necessary to address identified security concerns, and takes appropriate steps to address those concerns,” he said.
A staff person at Long Creek called local police at 9:49 p.m. Friday to report the break out, prompting South Portland officers to assist staff in a search of the property’s perimeter, the dispatch notes show. Officers also searched the area near the prison, located by the Portland International Jetport at 675 Westbrook St.
“Odds he climbed the fence very rare, most likely contained,” the dispatch log noted at 10:17 p.m.
But more than an hour later, at 11:37 p.m., Officer Tyler Morin found the boy at an Irving gas station a mile down the road, drinking from a bottle of liquor and a can, according to a police report.
When the officer approached him, the teen said he was waiting for some friends, but the officer found the boy’s velcro shoes to be suspicious, he wrote. He sent a picture to his sergeant, who identified him as the runaway youth. Morin placed the boy in handcuffs and took him back to Long Creek, according to the report.
Callie Ferguson is the deputy investigations editor for Maine Focus, the BDN’s investigations team. She can be reached at cferguson@bangordailynews.com.