TYLERTOWN — Dustin Broussard is on the lam again.
Walthall County Sheriff Duane Dillon said Broussard managed to slip away from a jailer at the county jail about 6 this morning during a prisoner exchange with Columbus-based Atlantic Prisoner Transport, which was returning Broussard and his wife Alysha from the Maricopa County, Ariz., jail.
They had been held there following their recent capture in Mexico after Broussard fled his grandmother’s funeral with Alysha in April.
Dillon said Alysha Broussard did not escape and is being held in the Marion-Walthall County Regional Correctional Facility in Columbia.
Dillon said Broussard escaped as jail officials were exchanging shackles and handcuffs with the transport company.
“As soon as the last cuff was removed, he ran from the jailer,” Dillon said. “He went through a gate that we had opened to allow the prisoners with the transport company to use our restroom.”
He said deputies are searching for Broussard, who is believed to be in Walthall County.
The sheriff said Broussard faces charges of escape and overpowering a corrections officer in connection with today’s escape. He said Broussard did not assault the jailer, but the overpowering charge is filed because he ran from him.
Broussard, the son of Walthall County Circuit Clerk Pat Broussard, escaped custody on April 25 while attending his grandmother’s funeral at Hartman-Hughes Funeral Home in Tylertown.
Pat Broussard declined this morning to comment on her son’s latest escape.
At the time of his first escape, Broussard was being held in the Marion-Walthall County facility, awaiting a hearing for probation violation for third-offense DUI and arson. He had been released from the facility to attend the funeral.
According to sheriff’s department reports Alysha Broussard managed to get the keys to her mother-in-law’s car and drive to the side of the funeral home to pick up her husband, who managed to slip away from his guard and leave the building.
The couple went to Mexico, entering the country at Laredo, Texas. They were taken into custody on June 30 by Mexican authorities on a fugitive warrant from Walthall County in the resort city of Cabo San Lucas on Mexico’s west coast.
U.S. marshals later took the couple to Maricopa County, Ariz., where they were recently picked up by Atlantic Prisoner Transport to return to Walthall County.
