Colorado Authorities Recapture Inmate Who Escaped for Fourth Time
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Authorities in Colorado have recaptured an inmate who escaped from a maximum-security prison.
State and federal officials said 48-year-old Douglas J. Alward was arrested Wednesday in a corn field near the northeast Colorado town of Yuma.
Alward was serving a 20- to- 40-year sentence at the Sterling Correctional Facility for attempted murder, assault, burglary and kidnapping.
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Police said Alward fled the prison, about 100 miles northeast of Denver, on Sunday. Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti said authorities, including the FBI, went door-to-door in towns and rural areas near Sterling in their search for him.
It was the fourth escape for Alward, who was first incarcerated in 1980 for a conviction of attempted first-degree murder, assault and burglary. He escaped from Buena Vista Correctional Facility on Dec. 2, 1980, by running from a prison bus with an inner tube and jumping into the Arkansas River in southern Colorado, Sanguinetti said.
Officials caught him a short time later as he floated down the river.
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About five years later, on Aug. 22, 1985, Alward escaped from the Colorado Territorial Facility. Sanguinetti said Alward broke into a storage area of the kitchen and escaped from the building through a hole in the wall. He used some boards and a rope to scale a prison wall, broke into a state transportation building, stole a dump truck and crashed it through a gate.
He was caught about five weeks later in Arizona, though Sanguinetti did not immediately have details of his capture.
On July 7, 1991, Alward was at the Fremont County Jail for a court appearance when he and another inmate overpowered a guard and stole the deputy's 9-mm. service weapon. Alward and the accomplice kidnapped a 19-year-old woman and released her in Colorado Springs, about 40 miles away from the courthouse, Sanguinetti said.
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Alward fled the state and was spotted about a week later in Idaho, where he fired shots at a policeman and kidnapped a man in Garden City, Idaho. He was captured in Ontario, Ore., the next day following a police chase.
Alward would have been eligible for parole in October and had worked his way to a classification considered just below minimum risk.
The Associated Press contributed to this report