A 6-foot-7, 260-pound man needed two sets of handcuffs before Houston County deputies could get him settled in the back of a patrol truck.
The encounter happened Sept. 3 in Houston County, Texas, where deputies arrested 30-year-old Keon Dewayne Leonard after what Sheriff Zak Benge described as a scuffle.
Leonard was cuffed behind his back for the trip to the Houston County Jail in Crockett.
The Houston County Sheriff’s Office released video from inside the truck as a look at what deputies sometimes encounter when people are having their worst days.
A Tight Fit
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Leonard slips his cuffed hands from behind his back to the front, turns toward the rear passenger door, and starts kicking.
The window eventually gives way. He works at the opening until he can get his upper body through, then squeezes the rest of himself out of the moving truck and onto the road.
Deputy Cruz is out after him almost immediately. Benge said she deployed her Taser and brought him back under control.
He was taken to jail in another vehicle.
“That window looked too small for him to go out,” one viewer wrote.
“Tuck and roll,” another added.
A third asked, “Where’s the window guard?”
The damaged door drew its own reaction. “No way cuh bent that door,” one commenter wrote, while another called the escape “actually kinda impressive.”
Still Not a Cell
Getting someone into the back of a patrol vehicle does not necessarily end the security problem.
The U.S. Justice Department has cited cases in which handcuffed arrestees freed themselves after being placed in patrol cars. One Texas detainee slipped his cuffs, released his seatbelt and opened the vehicle door before trying to run.
Police transport policies account for that risk. Louisville Metro Police, for example, requires prisoners to be cuffed behind the back with the cuffs double-locked and uses transport vehicles whose rear doors cannot be opened from inside.
Other prisoners have made it farther than the back seat. In 2023, a handcuffed Los Angeles County inmate broke a rear window and climbed from a moving sheriff’s vehicle onto a freeway. A Florida prisoner squeezed through the rear window of a cruiser in 2015 with his hands still cuffed behind him.
The Receipt
Texas custody records show Leonard remains in the Houston County Jail and list four charges.
His original warrant is listed as assault peace officer/judge, a second-degree felony with no bond.
Evading arrest or detention, a Class A misdemeanor, carries a $10,000 bond. Escape while arrested or confined, a third-degree felony, carries $20,000.
A third-degree felony criminal mischief charge involving damage to law-enforcement or corrections equipment carries another $10,000.
All parties are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.