Inmates tied together bed sheets and dug a hole in the wall — but not to escape, Okla. cops say

Early Friday morning, deputies with the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office say they were taking down a line made of inmates’ bed sheets that had been draped over a covered parking spot from inside the jail.

That’s when a second bed-sheet rope fell from inside the 12th floor of the jail building, according to a probable cause affidavit.

And it wasn’t coming from a window; inmates at the Oklahoma County Jail don’t get windows. Though it may conjure images of old-timey jailbreak movies, complete with ball-and-chain shackled to prisoners’ legs, no one was trying to escape either.

Deputies started an investigation on Aug. 14 into an inmate who had carved a hole in the wall of his jail cell, the affidavit states, “for the purpose of receiving contraband from the outside.”

The sheets had been cut into strips about the size of fishing line, the Associated Press reported.

Rather than run upstairs and bust the inmate(s) for knocking a hole in the wall, the deputies decided to sit back and watch. Sometime after 3:30 a.m. on Aug. 17, according to the affidavit, a car pulled into one of the jail parking lots on the same end of the building from which the bed ropes swung.

The car waited in the lot until Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Captain Bruce Henley approached on foot, according to surveillance video obtained by KFOR, and ordered the driver to stop. As it sped off, the vehicle struck Henley with a glancing blow from the side, according to the affidavit.

Another deputy chased the car for a couple blocks before it stopped and detained the four women inside: Myra Brooks, 26, Reba Brooks, 29, Lisa Bruner, 26, and Rochelle Hopkins, 39. There were two children in the car as well: one 10 months old, and the other 14 months old, according to the affidavit.

Each of the women has been charged with eluding a peace officer, child endangerment, assault and battery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit a felony, possession of MDMA in the presence of a child and marijuana possession, according to jail records. Bond for each has been set at $120,000.

Deputies found cigarettes, loose tobacco, marijuana, cellphones and a single ecstasy pill in the car, and say the women planned to wrap and tie the items in the bed sheet lines so the inmates could then pull the items into their cell.

Inmates burrowing through the walls at the Oklahoma County Jail has been an issue for law enforcement since the building went up in the 1990s, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mark Opgrande told McClatchy.

“The building was poorly designed from the start,” he said. “Over the years inmates have been able to find ways to chisel out bricks from the walls that lead to the outside as well as between cells. We have to stay ever vigilant and watch for this.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2018 at 1:16 PM with the headline "Inmates tied together bed sheets and dug a hole in the wall — but not to escape, Okla. cops say."